A Beguiling Sampling of Peking Opera

The antique performance idiom known as Peking Opera doesn’t necessarily come from China’s capitol, nor is it always conventionally operatic in the vocal-orchestral sense of the word. At the Alex Theatre in Glendale, for instance, extended displays of gymnastics and the martial arts, along with spectacular stylized makeup brought great visual impact to the four-part sampler program by the Hebei Opera Company on Sunday.

Located in the city of Shijiazhuang, some 175 miles to the southwest of Beijing, the company adopts the nontraditional use of decorative scenery in vogue in the People’s Republic since the restoration of Peking Opera in the late 1970s after a decade of government suppression. However, its program of excerpts offered more examples of the art’s piquant vocalism and intense emotional expression than most foreigners find in the performances available to them inside China these days.

The links to European grand opera loomed largest in two duets: the falsetto courtship in “The Sword Is a Gift From Bai Hua” and the throaty recognition scene of “Li Kui Visits His Mother.” The former dates from the Ming Dynasty, the latter from the previous Yuan Dynasty, with both pieces set against a background of civil strife and feudal corruption. However, the scenes on view merged exotic Peking Opera conventions with archetypal human situations: the wooing of a young couple, the reunion of mother and son.

After initially planning to personally execute the uninvited stranger discovered in her bedroom, princess Bai Hua suddenly turns sublimely delicate and coy as she falls in love, with the characters’ speech imperceptibly changing into song, their gestures into dance. Whether manipulating the enormous plumes on her headdress, peering shyly over an outstretched silk sleeve or simply cooing softly, Liang Weiling artfully embodied an impossibly stylized vision of femininity, aided by Yu Xiang Wei, initially playing drunk and then increasingly wide-eyed.

As the outlaw Li Kui in the second duet, gruff-voiced Chang Chunsheng looked fearsome in his mask-like black, red and white makeup and long black beard. But, of course, he immediately melted into a sentimental blob when meeting his blind mother, a role sung powerfully by Liu Di. Like “Bai Hua,” the exaggerated emotion here kept veering intentionally toward comedy, with small, realistic gestures (the mother feeling her son’s beard, for example) continually undercutting the grandiose passions on display.

“Stealing the Stored Silver” and “Havoc in Heaven” each showcased the company gymnasts and also shared plots making a virtue of theft--even when the gods themselves avenge the crime. In the former work, Zhang Yanling proved somewhat accident-prone in the starring role of the Blue Snake, batting and kicking spears away when hurled at her by her enemies. But Zhang Yunsheng made a big hit as a greedy official, wearing two bobbing discs on the sides of his hat that gave him an impish resemblance to Mickey Mouse. And the audience gasped en masse when what everyone took to be a mannequin suddenly started moving at the end of a long scene and turned out to be Zou Alei in the role of a warlike god.

Many warlike gods stalked “Havoc in Heaven,” but nobody dominated that primal Chinese lord of misrule, Su Wukong, a.k.a. the Monkey King. Defying authority and besting even the strongest warriors by a combination of agility, guile and magic, Zhang Xiaobo presided over an army of vaulting virtuosos but left his signature on the role primarily in the intimate moments of comic interplay. Indeed, his most indelible achievement may have been his delineation of the character’s different attitudes toward various deadly opponents: delighted and even a little smitten with the pretty females, disdainful and more than a little shamed when fighting an old man.

All the performers in the Hebei Opera use their eyes with remarkable skill to enhance dramatic values and design elements, but this irrepressibly itchy, light-fingered role provides a whole textbook on the art of the glance--an art rarer and arguably more cherishable than even the fabulous array of flips and cartwheels on view Sunday.