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Western
audience members don Peking Opera costumes.
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Witnessing
the application of Peking Opera makeup.
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Off-stage
exchanges.
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The Peking Opera Mei Lanfang, performed by the Beijing Peking
Opera Troupe to the accompaniment of the German Symphony Orchestra,
appeared in Berlin in late April 2006. The opera was an aspect
of the Cultural Reminiscences performance season, an auxiliary
event of the Berlin International Film Festival. It was the most
recent overseas performance by a Peking Opera company, but more
are forthcoming. The China Peking Opera Theater is all set to
tour Europe in 2007, and will revisit London the year after to
perform at the China Arts Festival as part of the 2008 Beijing
Olympics promotion campaign.
Sell-out Performances
In recent years, Peking Opera has become a favorite with Western
theatergoers. In 1999, the Beijing Monkey King Troupe’s five-night
performance date at the Belem Cultural Center in Lisbon was a
sell-out, and Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg declared February
19, 2005, the debut date of the Hubei Provincial Peking Opera
Theater’s three-night performance of Three Triumphs over
the White Bone Demon (San Da Baigujing), Peking Opera Day in the
Big Apple. Such a preference is even better manifested in the
box office success of the China Peking Opera Theater, according
to Zhang Yu, general manager of the Beijing-based China Performing
Arts Agency.
Two definable differences in the China Peking Opera Theater overseas
performance schedule of ten overseas trips annually are that commercial
performances now outnumber cultural exchange programs and that
tours to Western countries outnumber those it makes of Asian countries.
In May 2005, Askonas Holt Ltd, Britain’s largest concert
management agency, organized the performance of Wild Boar Woods
(Ye Zhu Lin) by the China Peking Opera Theater in London. This
marked the first time ever that a folk Chinese opera constituted
serious commercial competition to local productions within the
British theatrical arena.
Liu Xiaohua, head of the performance troupe delegation, tells
of the head of Askonas Holt’s trip to Beijing, made on the
strength of having seen a VCD of Peking Opera. He was so impressed
by the China Peking Opera Theater’s performance of Ye Zhu
Lin that he immediately decided to present the opera in London,
remarking, “If the Chinese can enjoy Shakespeare, why shouldn’t
British audiences appreciate Peking Opera?”
Upon the troupe’s arrival in London, the British impresario
held a news conference to publicize its performance dates. He
also arranged lectures on the origins of Peking Opera before each
performance, and for members of the audience and performers to
meet afterwards.
Despite Peking Opera’s being completely distinct from the
conventional Western mode, British audiences were captivated by
the Wild Boar Woods. As Liu Xiaohua recalls, “The British
audience’s rapt response completely dispelled our worries
that they would not understand the opera.”
In 2005, commercial performances by the China Peking Opera Theater
accounted for 80 percent of its overseas performance tours. Prior
to arriving in Britain, the troupe played seven Helsinki theaters,
from May 1 to 8. In October of the same year the troupe performed
as part of the Chinese Cultural Festival held at the Kennedy Center
in Washington, DC, and gave a three-night performance of The Women
Generals of the Yang Family (Yangmen Nujiang) at the Eisenhower
Theater. Despite ticket prices for the opera being the most expensive
of all events at the Chinese Cultural Festival, each of the three
performances sold out on advance bookings alone. The Washington
Post featured a front-page splash and picture of Peking Opera
performers under the banner: Kennedy Center’s most ambitious
international arts festival.
Overseas Aficionados
Peking Opera has long been a source of fascination to Western
audiences, but has remained outside the ambit of the world performance
art circuit. “Peking Opera has no fixed audience base in
the West. Those that go to see it enjoy its humor and more obvious
artistic skills, for instance the famous scene from The Crossroads
(Sancha Kou), but are generally oblivious of its profound cultural
implications,” says Wu Jiang, head of the China Peking Opera
Theater.
Chinese folk opera companies, however, have inched their way
into the hearts and minds of Western mainstream audiences. The
China Peking Opera Theater has been particularly successful in
carving out its niche on the commercial circuit, simply through
participating in international cultural exchange programs and
diversifying its repertoire.
Peking Opera is a highbrow mélange of music, dance, drama,
martial arts and acrobatics whose themes are performed in distinctive
styles of aria, costume and makeup. Yet it also embraces Chinese
popular culture as its dramas center on everyday occurrences and
the emotions of ordinary people. Wu Jiang believes that this centuries-old
Chinese performance art is more accessible to Western audiences
than Greek tragedy, and is optimistic that the innate artistry
of Peking Opera will win it a worldwide audience. But this, he
stresses, can only happen on the condition that Peking Opera troupes
accumulate experience and adjust to the international performance
art market. In order to be part of it, Peking Opera must adopt
an international strategy that will equip it to go global.
Wu cites the linguistic innovations that helped make his troupe’s
new production of Turandot, performed in Poland, Romania and Hungary
in October and November of 2004, such a huge success. Simultaneous
translation and projected subtitles truly brought the performance
home to the local audience, and the extra costs incurred by this
technical support were merited by the warm response they generated.
No less than five impresarios, European and American, subsequently
requested performance dates for Turandot.
Wu Jiang is anxious to dispel the impression Western audiences
may have gained from certain performance troupes that Peking Opera
consists of dramatized legends that hold the audience’s attention
by means of colorful martial arts sequences.
“Our next step is to produce more works for the international
market,” says Song Guanlin, deputy president of the China
Peking Opera Theater. “We intend to adopt a diversified market
strategy that will attract audiences from a wide scope of cultural
backgrounds and ethnicities.”
Many Peking Opera artists are keen to innovate. In March 2001,
Sun Ping, an accomplished Peking Opera actress, cooperated with
Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania State University Symphony Orchestra
in staging a Peking Opera concert at the university. She sang
arias, accompanied by the university orchestra, from The Red Lantern
and Dujuan Mountain. The performance was a great success.
“I call this integration of an old Oriental art form and
the most conventional of Western music genres ‘symphonic
Peking Opera’,” says Sun Ping, continuing, “I don’t
use the term ‘symphony accompaniment’ because a symphony
could never be consigned to mere accompaniment. I see ‘symphonic
Peking Opera’ as an integration of two unique art forms with
deep artistic significance, but which has no bearing on traditional
productions or the ‘model theater’ of the ‘cultural
revolution’.”
Another instance of direct integration of Peking Opera and Western
drama was the Shanghai Peking Opera Theater’s participation
in the “Hamlet Summer” arts festival in Denmark from
July 24 to August 4 of 2005. It performed the Peking Opera version
of Hamlet, called The Prince’s Revenge. This innovation was
so well received that during one performance the audience burst
into spontaneous applause more than 30 times.
So far 12 Shakespearean plays have been adapted into 16 Chinese
folk operas, including five in the Peking Opera mode. The Prince’s
Revenge is so far the most successful with Western audiences –
an impressive achievement in view of this Shakespeare play having
been completely transformed into Peking Opera, and Hamlet’s
soliloquy being performed as a Peking Opera aria.
Shan Yuejin, vice president of the Shanghai Peking Opera Theater,
cites The Prince’s Revenge as a successful example of a Chinese
classic performance art that bears tribute to a classic Western
drama. Director Shi Yukun believes that both Peking Opera and
Shakespeare constitute staged poetry, and that The Prince’s
Revenge embodies “the soul of Shakespeare in the form of
Peking Opera.”
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