Drama
Centre Theatre
Saturday (3 September 2016 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 September with the title "Dream Garden".
Known for its innovation and
adventurousness in programming, the Singapore International Festival of Arts struck
gold this year with Paradise Interrupted.
An “installation opera” by China-born and America-based partnership of composer
Huang Ruo and Emmy Award-winning visual designer-director Jennifer Wen Ma, this
co-commision by the festival and three international partners, premiered at the
Spoleto Festival last year.
The 80-minute opera is a modernistic take
at the famous dream sequence from the 16th century Ming dynasty kunqu opera Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu. Intertwined within its narrative was
the plight of the biblical Eve (on her own without Adam) who has been expelled
from the Garden of Eden. Thus the protagonist was just named the Woman (instead
of the fabled Du Li-Niang), sung and acted by Qian Yi who came to prominence in
the epic 20-hour performances of Peony
Pavilion in 1999.
Hers was a tour de force of dramatics and singing in a musical idiom that
splendidly melded Chinese and Western opera into one almost indivisible whole.
The libretto, a joint effort by Huang, Ma, Qian and writer Ji Chao, was
entirely new. This was no cut-and-paste job or pastiche but rather an original
creation, which while paying homage to the original was bold enough to strike
out on its own.
Waking up from her reverie of idealised
romantic bliss, the Woman is confronted by The Elements and Four Directions,
sung by counter-tenor John Holiday, tenor Yi Li, Baritone Joo Won Kang and
bass-baritone Ao Li. The foursome tormented and played with her emotions,
sometimes serving as a Greek chorus, with the exceptionally agile Holiday hitting notes even
higher than hers.
All this took place in an arid setting
that soon grew lush with the erection of a sole wire tree that sprouted leaves
and thousands of black paper cuttings which magically unfolded like a giant
origami concertina into monstrous shrubbery. The use of black, white and grey
as predominant colours was starkly effective, representing ink and paper, as
well as void and light.
The composer conducted from the pit an
ensemble formed by the T'ang Quartet and members of the Singapore Chinese
Orchestra and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. The music was mostly tonal but highly
chromatic, often spare, transparent and minimalist in textures, but closely
followed the dramatic action as it built to febrile climaxes.
The Woman's dream garden, as it turned
out, was illusory as she returned to the austere setting in which the opera
began with. How would she confront the future? In the original, Du Li-Niang
withers and dies from an unfulfilled broken heart (to be later resurrected by
the man of the dreams). Here, there is no such man, but Woman comes to a
self-actualisation that leaves with a sturdy sense of inner peace.
Paradise Interrupted, beautifully
conceived, received a performance that was as thought-provoking as it was
invigorating.
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