The National Peking Opera Theatre (Company), with the country's leading traditional opera performers, will open the 2005 Salisbury International Arts Festival on Friday in this quintessentially English city.
The 56-member troupe, led by two star Peking opera performers Yu Kunzhi and Li Shengsu, will perform the famous Chinese epic, "The Legend of the White Snake."
In its brochure, the festival organizer describes the play: "Embodying the essence and romance of Beijing Opera, it is a heart-breaking love story filled with incarnations, magic herbs and underwater spirits."
The Salisbury International Arts Festival held in this famous cathedral city, will be the last stop of the troupe's debut tour of the United Kingdom. The troupe arrived in London in early May.
Yu Kuizhi, its leader, told the Guardian newspaper it had taken two years of negotiations and talks to organize the tour.
It is the first time a national Peking Opera group has visited Britain for half a century, reported the newspaper.
Tonight, the troupe will stage the three-hour White Snake legend at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.
Last night, it presented the traditional Peking Opera play "Forest of the Wild Boars." Both shows have English subtitles.
The works playing, say the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, have been "particularly selected to illustrate the dazzling range and athleticism of Beijing Opera."
Forest of the Wild Boars is a tale of jealousy, murder plots and redeeming friendship and based on the ancient Chinese literary classic, "Outlaws of the Marsh," or as the translation is also known, "All Men are Brothers."
Since arriving in Britain, the troupe has staged several shows in London and Manchester. Following are excerpts from media reviews:
Alfred Hickling from Lowry, Salford, Greater Manchester writes in The Guardian on May 13, under the title "Undoubtedly an acquired taste: National Peking Opera Company in The Forest of Wild Boars"
In 1985 Wham! caused widespread bemusement by becoming the first Western pop group to perform in China. Twenty years on, the Chinese return the compliment by sending the National Peking Opera Company on its first ever British tour.
Judging from the tepid response from a sparse crowd, it seems we are no better prepared for a stately parade of Song Dynasty aristocrats than the Chinese were for a couple of grinning English boys with shuttlecocks down their shorts.
It's a pity that the arrival of one of the world's most dignified ensembles should prove to be such a muted affair.
While it's true that the finer nuances of the art are rarefied almost beyond comprehension, Beijing Opera also has its broad, vulgar side rooted in popular entertainment it's telling that when Mei Lanfang, the founder of this troupe, visited Russia in the 1930s he was feted by Stanislavski, while in America he was courted by Charlie Chaplin.
"The Forest of Wild Boars," the first piece of rotating repertoire throughout the tour, is based on an 800-year-old story in which an honorable military commander is framed and sent into exile.
The dialogue, delivered in speech that approximates singing and singing that sounds remarkably like speech, is confined within a very narrow, jarring frequency range that, to the untrained ear, gradually acquires the timbre of incessant drilling.
Yet true artistry becomes evident in any language, and the company's remarkable leader, Yu Kuizhi (the biggest box office draw in Beijing), maintains a seraphic, trance-like intensity throughout.
Donald Hutera at Sadler's Wells, London where the troupe performed over the weekend, writes in the Times:
A key work in the repertory of the National Beijing Opera Company of China, "The Legend of the White Snake" is not opera as we know it in the West.
Yes, the performers sing in high-pitched, keening voices that trail along a melodic line. They also speak text in a similar sing-song fashion.
What startles and engages our attention further is their skill in mime and a brand of gracefully mannered movement akin to dance, as well as a selective but spectacular use of acrobatics delivered with a martial-arts rigour and flair.
Chinese opera is an ancient and highly codified popular art form. This troupe, one of hundreds spread across the country and officially founded only half a century ago, is considered to be at the top of the heap. I can only assume that the other productions, both full-length and one-act, presented during its first British tour are as involving and entertaining as White Snake.
It begins as a charming rom-com in which boy (forty something Zhang Wei) meets girl (star actress Li Shengsu) during a chance shower. In no time at all there is an outwardly happy marriage, precipitously engineered by the young lady's maid (the feisty Huang Hua) or is it her sister? These two women, you see, embody a secret known to an old monk (Yang Yanyi) keen to pull the scales from the young husband's eyes. The bride, it turns out, and her loyal female companion are actually a pair of snake spirits who have adopted human form.
From then on White Snake wriggles into ever more fantastical realms, including a visit to a magical mountain of the gods. An initial confrontation between our fearless and pregnant! heroine and the mountain's guardians (Deer Boy and Crane Boy, played with great gravity and agility by Li Lei and Sun Liang) leads to an even greater, more athletic battle fought by the snake sisters and their water-spirit helpers (played by company members expertly handling rippling silk banners) against a heavenly army wielding sticks.
Jann Parry writes over the weekend, a review carried by the Guardian online:
Troupe Two, despite its name as the top touring arm of China's National Beijing Opera Company, has never been to Britain before.
It draws on the centuries-old tradition of what used to be known as Peking Opera a heritage vandalized by the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976). The sagas have been splendidly restored and new ones created, for television as well as the stage.
The link between the old melodramas and modern martial arts movies is clear. The plots are preposterous, the action thrilling; warriors fly through the air wielding huge swords, scissor-kicking opponents to pulp.
But these theatrical acrobats have no need of wires. Their fight routines are elaborately choreographed, involving banners, pikes and lances as well as backflips and barrel rolls.
Leading up to the spectacular water battle in "Legend of the White Snake," a romance unfolds in song and dance about the marriage between an enchanted woman and an ordinary mortal.
Although such unions are bound to end badly, there are sweetly comic episodes en route, more soap opera than high drama. The pink-faced husband (Zhang Wei), hopeless in a crisis, is very touching; the two women, poignant Li Shengsu as the White Snake and Huang Hua, funny and feisty as the Green Snake, are magnificent.
(China Daily May 25, 2005)
