A Short Trip to ‘The Peony Pavilion’

One of the most compelling arts stories at the end of the 20th century was the escape of “The Peony Pavilion” from the iron grip of China’s cultural authorities. The great 55-scene Kunju opera, often called China’s “Romeo and Juliet,” found a new, glorious life in the West in two competing versions, radically different--but both profoundly important. The 400-year-old opera got a controversial updating by Peter Sellars for the Vienna Festival, and a rare rendering in its complete 18-hour form (with subtle but telling modernizations) for the Lincoln Center Festival last summer. Together, these versions have so significantly enriched the notions of what world culture can be, and what opera can be, that neither genre is likely to ever be the same again.

These new versions have yet to find their way to Southern California. But Friday night at the Irvine Barclay Theater the most famous scene of “The Peony Pavilion” was included in a mixed bill given by the Beijing Kunju Opera Theatre, which began a six-week American tour with the appearance. This export is presumably part of China’s purist answer to modernization. Originally, the Shanghai Kunju Opera had been announced, the company that was to have performed the complete “Peony Pavilion” for Lincoln Center until that production ran afoul of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture. (The Festival ultimately mounted the original production itself.) The Shanghai company this fall put together its own complete “Peony Pavilion,” which has been lambasted as inept in the Western press. For reasons not fully explained, the Chinese government has sent us the Beijing company instead.

Begun in southeast China during the Ming dynasty, Kunju opera reached its pinnacle in the 16th century, and “The Peony Pavilion” by Tang Xianzu is considered its greatest achievement. A lyrical love story with supernatural elements set among the teeming life of Ming society, it was enacted through elegant folk arias, melodic spoken speech and sweeping movement on minimal sets. A painted backdrop, a table and chairs set the scene. Costumes, gesture and the haunting sound of ever-present flutes in a small ensemble fill in the rest for the imagination.

It was in this form that the Beijing company offered a 25-minute condensation of the scenes in which the heroine of “Peony Pavilion,” Bridal Du, takes her first walk in the garden and is so overcome by the lushness of spring that she has an erotic dream of meeting a young scholar (which will eventually come true). The scene was done simply and effectively. Wei Chunrong may have lacked the great presence of Hua Wenyi in the Sellars production or the startlingly fresh Qian Yi at Lincoln Center, but she had the requisite grace. Wang Zhenyi, as the young scholar, was charismatic, and Wang Jin was a properly chirpy maid, Spring Fragrance (misidentified in the program as the tutor Chun Xiang).

And yet there was, in this excerpt, a whiff of formaldehyde. It is through such efforts that the Chinese typically preserve one of their greatest artistic legacies, and it is thus that contemporary Chinese audiences rarely get more than the slightest indication of the work’s greatness. Next to Lincoln Center’s lavish and exquisite three-day presentation, Beijing’s realization seemed downright impoverished.

The “Peony Pavilion” scene Friday was but a quarter of a mixed bill that felt a bit like a high-culture version of “The Ed Sullivan Show.” The scenes excerpted from other operas (not all were identified beyond the title of the scene) had a more popular appeal, coming from other operatic traditions, such as Peking Opera, with its slapstick, fast-paced speaking to percussive accompaniment, martial arts displays and wonderful acrobatics. This is not such poetically incisive art as the greatest Kunju, but its combination of movement, music and sung speech is thrilling. A dropped sword or baton here and there demonstrated a not always flawless company, but the performances were certainly expert enough to demonstrate just how amazing Chinese opera can be in its many different forms and how essential it is that it flourish.