‘Peony Pavilion’s’ Heroic Marathon

It has been a long, eventful journey to bring “The Peony Pavilion,” a 401-year-old Chinese opera, from Shanghai to Lincoln Center. Obstacles, both political and artistic, had to be endured and overcome. And it is a long, eventful journey to witness this marathon production, some 18 hours long, spread over a three-day weekend. China’s most beloved love story, in which romance must transcend not just society but death itself, turns audiences into devotees.

And to experience this extraordinary production, the centerpiece of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival and one of the great cultural events of our age, is to immediately understand two things. The first is why the Chinese government risked diplomatic goodwill during President Clinton’s visit to China last year when it forbade the opera--produced by the Shanghai Kunju Opera Company with funds and artistic direction supplied by Lincoln Center--to travel to the United States. The second is why Lincoln Center found a way to realize it anyway.

Shanghai cultural officials formally objected to this “Peony Pavilion” as “feudal, pornographic and superstitious,” which it is--although that is less a quality of the production than the work itself. But the real offense appears to have been deeper. For traditionalists in China, this project was interpreted as a kind of American cultural imperialism. In China, the opera is rarely, if ever, presented complete, but is known by a handful of famous scenes, and the style of presentation comes from an oral tradition handed down, unquestioningly, over generations.

Lincoln Center’s approach is more Western. Appropriating the technique of re-creating early music in a manner both true to its origins yet meaningful to a modern audience, the production attempts to feel authentic rather than be authentic. Traditionalists in China objected to everything from the elaborate sets to specific design details on the costumes. I don’t know if the officials saw the translations used on the supertitles, which don’t attempt to relate the subtle poetry of the text and are often quite blunt, but I’m sure they would find them scandalous.

But I suspect there was something more galling yet when “Peony Pavilion” was presented in dress rehearsal in Shanghai last year. It may have been simply too good. It must surely be an affront to have Americans, with their money and ambition, come into China, employ the country’s greatest carpenters and embroiderers, hire its finest performers and musicians, and show the country how to revive a cultural treasure it has itself ignored. Nor did it help that the director, Cheng Shi-Zheng, who was born in China and trained in Kunju operatic tradition, has been a New Yorker for a dozen years and refused to kowtow to political functionaries.

American ingenuity, nonetheless, has prevailed. Lincoln Center, which owns the sets and costumes, has mounted the production with the members from the original cast it could entice out of China and new performers found in the United States. Bloomberg News has provided the funding in the name of freedom of expression. And the result, seen last weekend in the second of the three cycles being presented, is an enthralling vindication on every level of what this production stands for.

One only has to enter the functional concert hall of LaGuardia High School to leave New York City in a breathtaking flash. The set is gorgeous carpentry--a wooden pavilion, constructed of hand-joined pieces, set on a pond. Ducks swim and quack and bob for the goldfish below. Canaries, in wooden cages, serenade. An exquisite tapestry is its back wall; behind that, a fabulous painted silk screen.

*

The costumes will become one of the production’s legends. They number 550, and they were embroidered by 400 women, some of whose ancestors embroidered for the last Chinese imperial court.

But it is the acting, singing, movement, dance and the music that are the work’s greatest glory--to say nothing of the opera itself, by Tang Xianzu, China’s Shakespeare and Handel rolled into one.

The core love story is that of Du Liniang, a young girl who dreams of a real-life wandering scholar, Liu Mengmei, in the Peony Pavilion of her garden and dies of longing for him. She returns as a ghost to seduce the scholar who musters enough will to bring her back to life. Surrounding the lovers are a host of characters (160 in all), ranging from warring Mongols to bungling comic servants.

Simple and direct yet lush and sensuous, Cheng’s production, seamlessly moving from lyrical high poetry to low slapstick, presents this teeming world. The lovers are two of the most astonishing performers to be found anywhere. Qian Yi, the original lead from the Shanghai Kunju Opera Company, is a radiant presence in one unbelievable robe after another, intones speech and sings aria after aria after aria with heavenly poise (and also, when needed, girlish coyness). Wen Yu Hang, a veteran of Peking and Kunju opera, is just as striking physically, and his high soprano voice the last word in both graceful cultivation and heroic ardor. Each communicates in many ways, through singing and sing-song speech, through sublime finger movements and even the refined manner in which they manipulate their long sleeves.

In fact there are dozens of astonishing performers, and some assume as many as 20 or more roles. Singing, dancing, acting--even acrobatics--are all one in this form of opera. The music, which includes some 200 arias, is folk-based and its emotions are universal, and the band of Chinese musicians, with their lutes and flutes and other native instruments, beguile hour after heroic hour.

With “Peony Pavilion,” the multitalented Cheng--himself a singer of both Chinese and Western opera--has created a production of the scope, greatness, originality and importance of the handful of most important theatrical and operatic events of our time. It stands with the most important epics of Robert Wilson, the Thea^tre du Soleil and Peter Brook. A co-production with the Festival d’Automne in Paris will be mounted next; then it goes to Australia. Lincoln Center would like to export it elsewhere.

Los Angeles, anyone?

*

* The final cycle of “Peony Pavilion” will be performed Friday through Sunday, $55 (single episodes) or $210 (complete), LaGuardia Concert Hall, New York, (212) 875-5928.