London welcomes Peking Opera with a touch of originality

A production combining traditional Chinese opera and Western classical music took place in London on October 17, with a performance inspired by the life of Cai Lun, the man credited with the invention of paper, at Jerwood Hall.

The show, titled Ein Heldenleben: Cai Lun, which translates to A Hero’s Life: Cai Lun, was conceived, written and directed by renowned Chinese theater figure Chen Xinyi, best known for devising the style performance known as “symphonic drama-poetry”. “.

The soundtrack, performed by the Fidelio Orchestra conducted by Raffaello Morales, was composed by Richard Strauss in the 19th century, in a style called a tone poem, a single continuous movement composed of sequences similar to chapters or verses, rather than autonomous sequences. movements, like in a symphony.

Although Cai Lun’s greatest contribution to civilization was his invention of paper, it was his life as a eunuch in the imperial court during the era of Emperor He of the Eastern Han Dynasty ( 25-220) and the court intrigues in which he found himself involved. this caught Chen’s imagination.

“He is a giant of China, whose invention changed civilization and advanced cultural progress. But he also experienced misfortunes which aroused my sympathy: he is a super dramatic character,” adds -She.

With hard-to-find biographical details, Chen says the play is “inspired by his life, not a portrait of it – it’s theater, not a story.”

Combining a story with music written hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles apart may seem unlikely, but Chen says that as soon as she heard Ein Heldenleben (The Life of a hero) and understood what it was about, the couple was formed.

The show is divided into six segments that illustrate the hero’s journey through life and the triumphs and adversities he encountered along the way, which Chen said fits with Cai’s story.

“In 2019, I was rehearsing an opera at the National Theater of China and by the end of the day, I was exhausted,” she says.

“The director of the orchestra came and said to me: ‘There’s a performance tonight of something called The Hero’s Life, you have to hear it’. I said no but he finished by pushing me there in a wheelchair.

“When I got there, I wanted to sleep but as soon as the music started, I started having visions of Cai Lun, then I read the program and saw the titles of the different sequences that followed the hero’s journey, and I could see how they came together.”

Combining Chinese theater and Western music is a practice that Chen has explored for 20 years, with eight of her symphonic poetic dramas having already been performed, but this was the first time she had performed in the UK – something that she had wanted to do for a long time. .

“This country is the homeland of William Shakespeare, whom I admire very much, and there is a link between him and the great playwright Tang Xianzu, who emerged in China around the same time,” she explains. “Then, about 200 years ago, Europe saw the rise of symphonic music at the same time that China saw the rise of Peking Opera, a particular art form that uses characters to express emotions in the same way as symphonic music, these are two great performance styles that I love to bring together, and London is a city where I particularly wanted to do that.”