PARADISE INTERRUPTED / SIngapore International Festival of Arts / Review

PARADISE INTERRUPTED

Singapore International Festival of Arts

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 16^th 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.    

SPECTRUM: MUSIC AND WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

SPECTRUM: MUSIC & WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio / Sunday (10 April 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 April 2011 with the title "Soaking in surprises".

With new music, one really does not know exactly what to expect. Just take each surprise as they come. The first was conductor Tony Makarome himself. More familiar as a jazz bassist, he ambled in attired like some extra on the set of Casablanca. Assuming the role of engaging introducer and stand-up comic, he looked like a cross between circus ringmaster and Uncle Peter of Babies Proms.

Breaking the ice which often frosts up concerts of contemporary music, his way was direct and unstuffy. Soon the music began, with luscious strains of America-based Indian composer Juhi Bansal’s song cycle The Lost Country of Sight, based on Neil Aitken’s words. The scoring was light and transparent, for just cello, piano and sparing percussion, enabling the words to be highlighted.

Unfortunately soprano Khor Ai Ming, audibly recovering from laryngitis and placed too posteriorly, was limited in range and projection. Struggling with the words, much of the nuances in this exotically-coloured idiom were lost in the fray. Another reading on a better day will be keenly anticipated.

No such problems existed for the programme’s main work, Morton Feldman’s Music & Words. The 1987 collaboration between the New York avant-garde composer and playwright Samuel Beckett explored an uneasy relationship between the spoken word and music, encapsulated in a radio play.

The protagonists, played by narrators Craig De Wilde and Thomas Hecht, were holed up in a mock-up of a disc-jockey’s studio, complete with illuminated “On The Air” sign, reel-to-reel tape-player and several LPs. The props did not obscure a tour de force from De Wilde, whose typical broadcaster’s drawl was as convincing as his efforts to sing like a drunkard. The droll and grizzled Hecht, enacting a godlike character called Croak, was the perfect foil. Seven musicians performed sequences in interjection, but seemed distant from where the action was, which was probably what both creators had intimated all along. While it will take some time for this Asian premiere to sink in, just sitting back to contemplate this 35-minute Godot-like effort and its inanities was reward enough.

The concert closed with Chinese composer Huang Ruo’s Chamber Symphony No.1, named after the Sung Dynasty patriot-general Yue Fei. Mostly instrumental, its blend of Chinese and Western idioms was alluring, closing with the players laying down their instruments and chanting incantations. In this case, music often better expresses feelings which elude words.