Not exactly a cultural revolution

Jiang Ching was no stranger to opera. As a poor girl growing up in China during the 1920s, she became infatuated by arias from traditional Chinese opera. She first caught Mao Tse-tung’s eye as a young, seductive opera performer. Later as Madame Mao, she instigated a new kind of propagandistic Chinese opera to help promote the Cultural Revolution.

There is little question that her story -- the rags-to-riches rise of a cunning actress with an implacable appetite for revenge -- is the stuff of opera as well. Jiang Ching is a dazzling character in John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” with a show-stopping coloratura aria, “I am the wife of Chairman Mao.”

Now the most powerful woman of the 20th century has inspired an opera of her own. And Bright Sheng’s “Madame Mao,” which had its premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on Saturday night, was written by a composer who understood her power well. Sheng, who was born in 1955, grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, before immigrating to the United States and starting his career as an important composer.

Sheng brings enormous authority to the project. His compelling orchestral scores “H’un” and “Nanking! Nanking!” dramatize terrifying events in recent Chinese history. Poetic lyricism courses through his two enchanting chamber operas, “The Song of Majnun” and “Silver River.”

His ravishingly beautiful tone poem, “The Song and Dance of Tears,” premiered by the New York Philharmonic in March, is an exquisite blend of the musical East and West.

Thus expectations ran high for “Madame Mao,” which had all the promise of being the operatic event of the summer. But that expectation only made this dramatically perfunctory, theatrically artificial and surprisingly detached portrait of Madame Mao all the more disappointing, despite a few rich musical moments.

The problems begin with the libretto, written by Colin Graham, who also directed the production. Graham and Sheng conceive their protagonist as a kind of two-headed dragon and give us Jiang Ching I and Jiang Ching II. The first is the older, demonic Madame Mao, the second is the young actress with an appealing will of iron.

After Mao’s death in 1976, Madame Mao was sentenced to life imprisonment for her role in the oppressive Cultural Revolution. The opera begins in 1991, as she is about to hang herself in her cell. Jiang Ching I looks back on her life. She sees her younger self, Jiang Ching II, and often the two interact.

But rather than explore the yin-yang of this intriguing woman, the device tends to trivialize her. At the very end of the opera the two Chings face each other and ask, “When did you become me? Or I become you?” It’s the question, of course, we had hoped to have insight into during the opera.

“Madame Mao” is in two symmetrical acts (the first an hour, the second a bit shorter). The first moves backward in time from suicide to meeting Mao. The second moves forward again. Each act has a Western ballroom scene and a scene from Chinese opera in the center. Each act is a fluid movement of short historical situations, though with fictionalized details. But in this constant shifting of perspective between the two Jiang Chings and the incessant flow of incident, there is little opportunity to get a sense of person.

The ultimate, unsatisfying theme of the opera is that Jiang Ching was always an actress and her greatest role was Madame Mao. There is, however, little to suggest even that trite theme in this production.

The bland sets by Neil Patel consisting of movable panels -- Mao’s bedroom looks like it could be the InterContinental Hotel in Berlin -- the often earnest, leaden acting and the frivolous choreography by Lily Cai, all serve to further the impression of a Chinese never-neverland, of an opera that wants nothing more than to avoid any direct confrontation with its protagonist. The last straw for me was in Mao’s vituperative deathbed scene where he suddenly turns improbably Shakespearean, calling his wife “a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Sheng’s score challenges the singers with great dramatic outbursts, leaping octaves and endless high notes, and most respond by hunkering down with shrill determination. The light soprano Anna Christy’s Jiang Ching II proved the liveliest figure on stage. Mezzo-soprano Robynne Redmon’s Jiang Ching I often seemed schoolmarmish. The baritone Alan Opie was the bland Mao. Mark Duffin and Kelly Kaduce struggled through their parts in the Chinese opera scenes.

Where the opera proved most interesting was in the orchestral writing. In a scene in which Jiang Ching murders her enemies during the Cultural Revolution, it is the brass interjections and the percussion that offer the real drama, thanks also to a strong conductor, John Fiore.

But the blend of Eastern and Western influences is not as comfortable here as it often is in Sheng’s music. He mimics Ravel’s “La Valse” for the ballroom scenes (cute the first time, tired the second). Jiang Ching’s main theme sounds as though it were inspired by something from Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd.”

Perhaps it was Sheng’s own closeness to Madame Mao and what she wrought that sent him scurrying to the safety of Ravel and Sondheim. Rather than using opera to uncover the inner nature of this mysterious and important historical figure, she is presented as little more than a curiosity.