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Savaged Opera
| Article
# : |
19871 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
1,789 Words |
| Author
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Theodore W. Libbey, Jr.
Theodore W. Libbey, Jr., formerly the senior editor of Musical
America, contributes regularly to national publications and is
currently at work on a selective guide to classical music on
compact discs. |
Before the arrival of a new world wonder brings an end to history, human conflict, and opera--for without conflict there can be no opera--we should consider the true nature of our feelings for each other. During the past fifty years, humanity has witnessed World War II and the Holocaust; the communist seizure of power in Europe and Asia; the disappearance of millions into the Gulag Archipelago; Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia; wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan; the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1967 and 1973; the Persian Gulf War; revolutions from the Left in Cuba and Nicaragua, and from the Right in Chile; and civil wars in Lebanon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Yugoslavia.
These are only the highlights of the bloodiest fifty years in the history of man. It is our chapter of history, a chapter violent and angry enough to make the intrigues of most operas seem like child play. One of its darkest pages belongs to China's Cultural Revolution, which affected by far the greatest number of people of any of the upheavals of our time. The suffering engendered by the Cultural Revolution may yet be too large a story for the operatic stage, but it is the story behind the story of Jin Xiang's opera Savage Land, which received its American stage premiere in January during the winter season of the Washington Opera.
Jin Xiang, born in 1935, graduated form the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1959--whereupon he was sent to work as a farm laborer in Xingjiang province for twenty years. During his forced stay in China's Siberia he struggled to broaden his musical horizons, and eventually was able to establish himself as the conductor of provincial song-and dance troupe. Only with the end of the Cultural Revolution, a little over a decade ago, was he able to return from exile and get on with his profession life. In 1984 he joined the faculty of the Chinese Music Conservatory, where he is now a professor of composition and director of the Composition Research Center.
His is a remarkable, but not unusual, story. Many other classically trained Chinese musicians suffered similar torment during the Cultural Revolution; some had their fingers broken, most had their lives shattered. Inspired by stories of Mr. Jin's perseverance, I went to a performance of his opera expecting to encounter a powerful work of musical theatre that delivered a stinging rebuke to the system of communist rule under which Mr. Jin had spent twenty years in obscurity. I was disappointed on both counts. I found Savage Land a tedious essay that shows little understanding of the operatic craft, and a piece whose message--if there is one-- gets lost in its
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