The night before the world premiere of Poet Li Bai at Colorado's Central City Opera, producer Martha Liao told her opera-singing husband Tian Haojiang: "I have been thinking more of the composer Guo Wenjing than you these past two years." Liao, president and co-founder of Asian Performing Arts, which co-comissioned the landmark opera, was only joking to her beloved who sings the title role, maybe to relieve some of the tension, which was rising from this time-consuming and sometimes nail-biting realization of this ambitious cross-culture project.

(From left) Wine (tenor Chi Liming), Moon (soprano Huang Ying), Li Bai (bass Tian Haojiang) and Poem (Peking Opera actor Jiang Qihu) reveal ancient Chinese poet Li Bai's spiritual world.  

In 2000, Hong Kong-born Diana Liao, Martha's younger sister, a former United Nations interpreter and frequent collaborator with Chinese dramatists, set about writing a libretto about the life of Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai (AD 701-763) in conjunction with playwright Xu Ying.

Two years later, Diana Liao presented the first draft to Tian, her brother-in-law, as a birthday gift. Martha and Tian soon went to the US-based composers Tan Dun and Chen Yi but both were busy with other commissions.

In early 2005, impressed by composer Guo Wenjing's chamber opera Night Banquet staged at the Lincoln Center, Tian turned to him and Guo agreed but insisted the libretto be written in Chinese. "It's impossible to maintain the original taste if Li Bai's poems were translated into other languages," Guo says.

The composer started working in July 2005 and had planned to finish the score in eight months, but it took him two years. He was still putting the final touches on the opera during an 18-day workshop in Beijing that ended on May 29, just two weeks before the cast and artistic team were set to gather in Central City for the main rehearsals.

"Every day we were waiting for new music to come," Tian says. "We had to pick up the new music, run to the stores to make copies, and send them to the singers and the director, and Diana had to work on the words. It was crazy."

As exciting as it was to hear the new sections - in many cases just hours after they had been completed - it was also scary. The singers had much less time than usual to memorize and become comfortable with their parts. Days before orchestral rehearsals were scheduled to begin on June 24, the pressure remained intense. Guo was racing to finish the orchestrations.

"The fastidious Guo says that the melodies are the gift from God and the God is not that generous. 'So don't push me too much otherwise I would be sent to the mental hospital'," says playwright Xu.

"Therefore, we missed the schedule to premiere in Sydney Opera House and in Venice. But none of us complained and when we got the final score, we all knew that Guo did not disappoint us and it was worth the time."

A Chinese-language opera about a poet-hero all but unknown in the West would pose an unusual challenge for any opera company, particularly one nestled in the Colorado mountains. Mindful of the financial risk, Central City Opera had scheduled only six performances.

However, the premiere conducted by Dutch maestro Ed Spanjaard, who has conducted Guo's previous operas, proved Xu's words and all the six performances were sold out. The Central City Opera general director Pat Pearce hailed the music as "a warm Puccini blanket".

"Poet Li Bai is a total success. It marks another major step forward for the burgeoning Chinese classical music world," wrote Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post's fine arts critic.

"Unlike many new operas, which are forgotten shortly after their debuts, this has what it takes to live on: a compelling story and fresh, involving score, plus a multicultural dimension that gives it a feeling of novelty, even exoticism."

If Western audiences who know little about the poet could enjoy and be touched by the opera, Chinese people should appreciate it much more. Tonight, almost the same cast (soprano Zhou Xiaolin will take place of Huang Ying to sing the role Moon) will give the China debut of the opera at Poly Theater. Shanghai Opera House will play the score under the baton of its artistic director Zhang Guoyong. And then the production will run at the Shanghai International Arts Festival on October 15.

In director Lin Zhaohua's eyes, this 90-minute one-act work is the first, true opera from China. It blends post-modern orchestral atmospherics, traditional Peking Opera and a dreamy, imaginative libretto that paints an impressionistic portrait of the great Chinese poet who stands as tall in the Chinese cultural consciousness as William Shakespeare does in the English-speaking world. Li Bai's surviving oeuvre of 1,100 poems has served as a literary benchmark in Chinese culture.

Before the premiere at the Central City Opera, the composer seemed unfazed by Western audience's unfamiliarity with Li Bai at all. There is, Guo stressed, a humanity here.

"We show his frailties, his failings, his desires," he says of the poet. "He is a normal human being. There is a touch of sadness here," Guo admits. "He's lived out his own dream. There is melancholy, but not tragedy."

Foremost in Guo's mind was creating an appreciation among Americans for the words of an ancient Chinese poet. The opera, Guo says, subtly investigates "the contrast between modern man and ancient man, between Chinese and American ideals". "We all have common points, and it's important to share them."

The challenge for the actor is that besides Li Bai, the other three characters - Wine, Moon, and Poem - actually are also Li Bai himself, which reflect the different aspects of his inner psychology.

Taking on the challenge is the basso Tian, an internationally known bass who has performed more than 50 operatic roles and 26 of them at New York's Metropolitan Opera since 1991. "Li Bai is my first title role. After I received this libretto, and especially after we started working on the music and the staging, I found this person more complicated than what I remembered or imagined," Tian says.

It is his long-time dream to sing an opera in Chinese but unexpectedly, singing in Chinese became the most challenging part.

Although he is fluent in Chinese, he primarily sings opera in Italian and French. Adapting to Chinese opera required months of training. "I could feel my throat asking questions," he says.

The singers portraying his sidekicks are equally stellar. Chi Liming brings his clear, agile tenor and an appropriately mischievous spirit to the role of Wine. Peking Opera actor Jiang Qihu excels as Poem. Hailed as "the most open-minded Chinese folk opera singer" by Guo, Jiang has inspired Guo to borrow the folk opera timbers into the opera composition.

(China Daily October 9, 2007)