Opera back with power, foibles intact
Near the end of the first act of “Dream of the Red Chamber,” the elaborate and throbbingly tragic opera by composer-librettist Bright Sheng and co-librettist David Henry Hwang, Princess Jia comes back to her family’s palace in the Chinese provinces. She’s been in the capital, where she has found favor in the eyes of the Emperor and become his chief concubine, and now she sees her ancestral home with new eyes.
Like the princess — who isn’t among the opera’s main characters but emerges as one of its most compelling — “Red Chamber” made its own homecoming last Tuesday, returning to the San Francisco Opera, where it had its commissioned world premiere in 2016. The piece has been around the world since then with performances in Hong Kong and throughout China; its return marks the first time the company has revived a commissioned work.
Has “Red Chamber” changed in six years? Not noticeably.
A handful of post-premiere revisions, a few cast changes in the principal roles and powerful new leadership in the pit from conductor
Darrell Ang
— the operatic equivalent of a new haircut and a different pair of glasses — haven’t significantly altered the opera’s distinctive array of strengths and weaknesses.
Sheng’s score, studded with lustrous melodies and interjections of traditional Chinese sonorities (in particular the qin, a plucked stringed instrument) still sweeps through the War Memorial Opera House with a combination of expressive sinuousness and force. There are numerous opportunities for vocal display, which Tuesday’s cast embraced delectably.
Designer Tim Yip’s elaborate physical production, infused with expanses of ornate brocade and dreamlike colors, and the fluid stage direction by Stan Lai are a wonderful and slightly guilty pleasure.
But the dramaturgy remains lumpy, with a narrative that devotes nearly the entire first act to successive waves of exposition before giving way to compelling action after intermission.
In short, one can exult in the opera’s various musical and visual rewards from moment to moment without feeling that they coalesce into a fully satisfying whole. “Red Chamber” is too big in its scope and not quite sufficiently attentive to the inner lives of its characters.
Sheng and Hwang adapted the libretto (sung in English, with supertitles
in both English and Chinese) from a small section of the 18th century novel by Cao Xueqin, one of the four cornerstones of classical Chinese literature. At heart it’s a Romeo-and-Juliet story, with the love between Bao Yu and his orphaned cousin Dai Yu set against the dramatic backdrop of dynastic struggles.
The Jia clan, to which both lovers belong, is in financial peril from which only a politically advantageous marriage rather than a love match will rescue them. (In other words, it’s “Romeo and Juliet” but also “Lucia di Lammermoor.”) If you’re betting on romance to emerge triumphant, you must be new to this.
“Red Chamber” operates on a large footprint, but it’s most effective during scenes of close-up intimacy. Dai Yu, sung with brightly quivering intensity by debuting soprano Meigui Zhang, gets a couple of solo arias that spin out a silvery thread of melody, and her scenes alone with Bao Yu (tenor Konu Kim, in an equally robust company debut) sit proudly within the operatic tradition of the Romantic love duet.
Outside of the duo’s private realm, the opera’s world is almost entirely female; a character note for Bao Yu arrives early, when his mother remarks that he is reluctant to leave the women’s quarters and become a fully grown man. These roles were superbly handled all around — by Sabina Kim as the imperious Granny Jia, by Hyona Kim as Bao Yu’s scheming mother, and by Hongni Wu as Bao Chai, whose marriage to Bao Yu is intended to serve the family’s political and financial needs.
The main exception is the spoken role of the monk who tells us the story in an odd Thanframing device, for what turns out to be his own personal motivations. Actor Francis Jue drew the audience in with his wry, plummy delivery, and the San Francisco Opera Chorus, led by John Keene, served compelling turns as courtiers, soldiers and restless ghosts.
Yet most powerful, in a fascinating way, was the performance of soprano Karen Chia-ling Ho as Princess Jia. She is the only character who seems to see the action from a vantage point of full knowledge, understanding the risks and strategies of imperial jockeying as no one else does, and this gives her music a rich and tragic cast that Ho brought out to perfection.
“Dream of the Red Chamber” is just one of several new works to have come into the world under the auspices of the San Francisco Opera’s burgeoning interest in commissioning over the past two decades. It’s the first to return home again, and one can only hope it won’t be the last.