A SINGAPORE TRILOGY / L'arietta / Review

A SINGAPORE TRILOGY

L’arietta

The Arts House

Friday (12 October 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 October 2018 with the title "Realising the dream of Singaporean opera".

In opera parlance, Il Trittico refers to three one-act operas by the Italian Giacomo Puccini, namely Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Singapore has been bestowed a Trittico of her own by young composer Chen Zhangyi and librettist Jack Lin, whose A Singapore Trilogy was performed complete for the first time in a single sitting at a single venue.

Composer Chen Zhangyi and
librettist Jack Lin (inset)

All three operas, sung in English and directed by veteran thespian Nora Samosir, had typically Singaporean settings with characters and inter-personal relationships one would readily identify with. Opera company L’arietta spared little effort in creating an immersive experience by staging the performances simultaneously in two different spaces within The Arts House, with the audience up close and featuring some of the local vocal scene’s finest voices.

Receiving its world premiere in The Blue Room was Kopi For One (2018), centred on an estranged father-daughter relationship within a neighbourhood kopitiam. Soprano Akiko Otao and tenor Jonathan Charles Tay played protagonists who seemed remote despite the familial connection. Their disparate personalities were brought together by the levity of soprano Yee Ee-Ping’s cleaning auntie, she of unabashed Singlish and spouted colloquialisms.    

This emotional distance, although initially jarring, was well-founded. It was in the opera’s final minutes when the twist was only revealed: the father we saw and heard was a ghost. The music was modern yet tonal, accompanied by an ensemble of violin, cello, flute, clarinet and piano, conducted by the composer himself. As if to complete the experience, the audience was also treated to coffee, tea, Milo and a selection of nyonya kueh during the intermission.  

They were later ushered to The Living Room for the far more light-hearted Laksa Cantata (2013), a Singaporean update on the story in J.S.Bach’s Coffee Cantata. Soon-to-wed Stephen (tenor Samuel Ng) and Leah (soprano Ng Jingyun) fuss over whether laksa lemak should be served at their nuptials. What appeared to be sure recipe for a split soon resolved in a steaming hot bowl of compromise. Here the dreamy Stephen and feisty Leah were well-characterised by both Ngs, helped by witty dialogue, and their final waltz of blissful truce eventually sealed the deal.

  

Finally, reminiscence and reflection dominated Window Shopping (2014), where sopranos Felicia Teo and Phoebe Chee held sway. Engaging in a favourite local pastime, both ladies elicit different reactions after stepping into a high end shoe boutique. The wistfulness of Teo’s older woman contrasted starkly with Chee’s ecstatic young girl, but both were essentially the same person separated by the passage of time. Youthful exuberance of youth gives way to wizened experience, with the unifying factor being Chen’s jazz-inflected score played by the same instrumental combination led by Aloysius Foong. 

Two decades ago, Singaporean opera seemed a distant dream. Today, it has become par for the course. With this excellent trilogy, Chen Zhangyi should no longer be referred to as a composer of promise, but one of stature.  

PROJECT LAKSA / Song Ziliang and Friends / Review

PROJECT LAKSA

Song Ziliang and Friends

The Living Room @ The Arts House

Friday (12 July 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 July 2013 with the title "More local flavour needed".

When it comes to food, Singaporeans need not be persuaded twice. This would explain how two evenings of the chamber concert Project Laksa at The Arts House were sold out and a matinee had to be added. Audiences had been promised a sumptuous musical programme, topped with a sampling of Prima Taste’s trademarked laksa, Singapore style.

The main dish was the World Premiere of Singaporean composer Chen Zhangyi’s Laksa Cantata, a local spin-off from J.S.Bach’s Coffee Cantata, with a witty and rather endearing libretto by Jack Lin. It is a 20-minute long mini-opera with two arias, two duets and spoken recitatives, accompanied by violin, clarinet and piano. The premise was about two soon-to-be-weds squabbling over whether laksa should be served at their wedding dinner.

Soprano Rebecca Li was the feisty and sharp-tongued Leah, antagonist of dreamy and self-indulgent Stephen, sung by Symphony 92.4 deejay Kiat Goh, whose craving is a steaming bowl of laksa. Chen chose a completely Western idiom for this setting, such that Leah’s Scorned Woman Aria sounded like a Bernsteinesque showpiece, full of syncopations and twists which Li negotiated with much ease.

For Stephen’s Laksa Aria, the inspiration was Benjamin Britten in his more melodious moments, and Goh nailed the words with gusto. And there were titters when he sang, “The flawless complexion of the white bee hoon, wavering in a sea of coconut cream, the tau pok and hae only makes me swoon.”  Together, their duet Agree To Disagree, had another harmonious serving of colloquialisms.

“Some say no harm, like the laksa of Katong. Others have no qualm, but they serve no sotong,” goes another line. With the threat of ma-in-law coming over to stay, the couple settle their differences (no laksa for a day), closing peaceably with a blissful duet that opens, “A new bowl is a new day”.

This enjoyable exercise would have been a greater coup had Chen had mustered a Peranakan or local idiom to spice up the work. Perhaps a detailed study of dondang sayang and related musical traditions, and the liberal use of baba and nyonya patois might yield a more authentic second version of the cantata in the near future.

As mastermind of this project, pianist Song Ziliang also helmed the balance of the 80-minute concert which included cross-cultural and cross-generational explorations in music. The eclectic programme was a bit of a rojak, opening with two piano solos from China, the impressionistic Autumn Moon On Calm Lake and percussive drum-dominated dance Celebrating Our New Life.

Clarinettist Colin Tan and pianist Christine Octaviani then added a klezmer number Sholem-Alekhem, Rov Feidman! by Hungarian Jew Bela Kovacs, which sounded like a dance out of Fiddler On The Roof. Music from two modernist composers who chose to go retro, Russian Alfred Schnittke and Frenchman Darius Milhaud, completed the programme.

Schnittke, better known as a polystylist, took the path of Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne for his Suite In The Old Style for violin and piano, by rehashing baroque dance forms. Violinist Wu Bingling and Song were harmonious throughout, with the occasional dissonance to remind listeners of the century we are living in. They were joined by Tan in Milhaud’s Suite for clarinet trio which looked at old French folkdances and pastorals before closing with a Brazilian twist.

This is Song’s encouraging debut at curating a varied cross-genre programme, one that juxtaposed music and gastronomy. However it is not new, as composer Robert Casteels had done it before. What other mouth-watering prospects does Song and his team have in store, a char kway teow concerto perhaps?  

  

Enough of the music, its time to indulge in Prima Taste's laksa!