|
ASIA SOCIETY PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF COMMISSIONED OPERA WENJI: EIGHTEEN SONGS OF A NOMAD FLUTE
Five Performances - Opening Night Thursday, January 31, 2002, 8:00 p.m.
Composed and conducted by Bun-Ching Lam
Libretto by Xu Ying
Directed by Rinde Eckert
Set design by Robert Brill
Costume design by Linda Cho
Lighting design by Allen Hahn
Singers:
Ethan Herschenfeld (Bass)
Li Xiuying (Soprano)
Zhou Long (Beijing Opera Performer)
Sung in English and Chinese, with bilingual supertitles.
The Asia Society presents the world premiere of Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, a contemporary chamber opera by renowned composer Bun-Ching Lam and librettist Xu Ying. Directed by Rinde Eckert, the tale unfolds from the magical suitcase of a poor, itinerant storyteller to fill the stage with light and color as the characters come to life. The opera is based on the true story of poet/ musician Cai Wenji, a scholar's daughter in the Han Dynasty who became a prize of war and is eternally torn between two worlds. Lam's lyrical score is composed for three Chinese and four Western instruments, and one Chinese and two Western singers. A special feature is the acrobatic rhythms created by Beijing opera performer Zhou Long that contrast with the melancholy of the soprano's song. Xu Ying's libretto presents an intricate balance of music, poetry and theatre. The set, designed by Robert Brill, evokes environments as grand as the mountains of the steppes and as intimate as the inside of a Mongolian yurt.
Five performances will be held at the Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street) in New York City, at 8:00 p.m., Thursday - Saturday, January 31 - February 2, and Friday and Saturday, February 8 and 9. Tickets are $25 ($20 for Asia Society members); $15 for students/ seniors; group discounts are available. Tickets can be purchased at the Asia Society Box Office or by calling 212-517-2742.
Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute has been commissioned by the Asia Society and co-produced with the Hong Kong Arts Festival in association with the New England Foundation for the Arts. The opera is the result of a four-year collaboration between composer Lam and librettist Xu. Their work highlights universal themes - the pain of separation and exile, the grief of families torn asunder by war and conflict, the simultaneous feelings of alienation in an unfamiliar cultural surrounding and the joy of new discovery, set against the backdrop of war and a nomadic lifestyle.
The story of Wenji is set during the time of the Silk Road. Here, Eckert and Brill make silk a metaphor for creating the story, literally using it to create changing environments and seasons. A skein of silk that emerges from the "magical suitcase" acts as an image-maker that transforms and takes different shapes to depict changing seasons and passing landscapes of snow, mountains, sand dunes, a yurt and even a bird.
According to Rachel Cooper, Director of Performing Arts and Cultural Programs at the Asia Society, "Bun-Ching Lam, Xu Ying and Rinde Eckert have given a radical new language to the ancient story, by creating a setting that is at once the steppes of Mongolia, the streets of Beijing and even an unnamed neighborhood in an urban setting, thereby highlighting the tale's contemporaneity and underscoring its multiple meanings."
The true historical person, Cai Wenji (185 - 220 CE) was the daughter of a prominent scholar statesman. She was abducted from her parents' home by the invading Xiongnu (a confederation of nomadic tribes based in Mongolia) army and carried away to a new desolate land. Throughout the years of her captivity Wenji's heart continually longed for the home she was forced to leave behind. An accomplished poet and musician, she poured her feelings into verse and music and documented her experiences. Her writings, The Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute and Poem of Anger and Sadness, embody a variety of conflicting emotions ranging from her resentment towards her captors, her observations on the 'barbaric' nomadic culture and lifestyle, her longing to hear the Chinese language, the gradual fondness she develops for her husband and her love for her children.
Thematic material for the opera is drawn from these poems and songs that Wenji composed on her beloved qin (seven-stringed zither), which is the primary motif in the opera. The libretto is a marriage of classical Chinese and contemporary idioms. Over the course of Wenji's exile, we see the classical Chinese language and poetic nuances undergo a gradual transformation in instrumentation, expression and vocal styles into a more "contemporary" soundscape, including verses sung in English. The General's role is sung entirely in English while the Chinese characters are sung wholly in Mandarin, symbolizing the parallel universes inhabited by the characters. Wenji's character alternates between the two languages as an expression of how she is torn between the two worlds. In doing this, the text brings the characters in the story closer to contemporary experience providing a real but subtle connection between the historical character of the second century and the audience. In addition, the difference and the distance between Wenji's China and the Mongolian desert can be heard as an underscore of sampled sounds, including gusting wind, migrating geese, snatches of qin music, galloping horses and market noise all passing through the sound environment.
Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute is made possible with generous support from the W. L. S. Spencer Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Meet The Composer/International Creative Collaborations Program in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Kitchen and the Asian Cultural Council. Additional support for the Asia Society's Cultural Programs is provided by the Friends of Asian Arts, Wallace - Reader's Digest Funds, The Starr Foundation, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Hazen Polsky Foundation Inc., and the Harold J. and Ruth Newman Philanthropic Fund.
Wenji will be presented at the Hong Kong Arts Festival in March 2003.
Performance Schedule
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
January 31, February 1 and 2*
Friday and Saturday
February 8* and 9, 2002
At 8:00 pm
Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, New York City
Tickets are $25 ($20 for Asia Society members); $15 for students/seniors
Group discounts are available
Tickets can be purchased at the Asia Society Box Office or by calling 212-517-ASIA.
*Performances on February 2 and 8 will be followed by an informal discussion with the artists (free with purchase of performance tickets.)
Artists' Biographies
Bun-Ching Lam (Composer and Conductor)
Bun-Ching Lam is a versatile composer who offers a wide catalogue of works which have been praised as "Alluringly exotic"(The New York Times) and "hauntingly attractive."(San Francisco Chronicle) Born in the Portuguese colony of Macao, Bun-Ching Lam first studied piano at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and later received a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California at San Diego. Defying cultural boundaries, her work stretches both Chinese and Western musical idioms to create a highly personal and compelling musical voices. Her compositions have captured a number of awards, including the 1991 Rome Prize, the highest honor at the Shanghai Music Competition, and a Lili Boulanger Award. She has also been a recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Asian Cultural Council, National Endowment for the Arts, New York foundation for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center. She was the Music Alive! Composer-in-Residence for the New Jersey symphony Orchestra during the 2000-2001 season, and have received commissions from the American Composer's Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music America for Music From China, Paul Dresher Ensemble, and Composer's Forum for Ursula Oppens
and the Arditti Quartet. Bun-Ching Lam lives and works in New York. Her music has been recorded on CRI, Tzadik, Nimbus, Koch International Classics, Sound Aspect and Tellus.
Xu Ying (Librettist)
Xu Ying was born in Hunan, China, where he began his training in the traditional Hunan opera, Huaguxi. After receiving his Bachelor's degree from the Hunan Art School, he continued his studies at the China Traditional Opera Institute in Beijing where he received a second degree in script writing and Chinese opera theory. He was a leading actor with the Hunan Opera Company and taught at the Hunan Art School for five years. Xu is currently the resident playwright with the China Opera and Dance Drama Theater Company in Beijing. He has written numerous plays, operas, articles and a book on the current state of Chinese opera entitled Beijing Opera's Shock. He was the dramatist for several recent contemporary theater works including the Bacchae, a joint production of the New York Greek Drama Company and Beijing National Opera Company and Empty Tradition/ City of Peonies a dance theater work commissioned by the Asia Society. He was a fellow at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance in 1996 and 1997 and was a visiting lecturer at UCLA, teaching Chinese Opera theory. He is currently working with composer Tan Dun on a libretto for a new opera titled Tea.
Rinde Eckert (Director)
Rinde Eckert is a writer, composer, singer, actor and director whose music and dance theater pieces have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. He has collaborated a great deal with composer Paul Dresher, having written and performed or directed ten pieces of theater or dance with Paul since 1980. He has also worked extensively with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company as a writer/performer and composer creating such pieces as Slow Fire, Shelf Life, Shorebirds Atlantic, The Gates/Faraway Near and most recently Breathe Normally. In 1992 he wrote, composed and performed The Gardening of Thomas D., an evening length theatrical duet with dancer Ellie Klopp. Eckert continues to perform The Idiot Variations (a solo work developed in 1996) all over the U.S. and abroad. In 1998, his Romeo Sierra Tango, a one-man "Romeo and Juliet" commissioned by the New York Shakespeare Festival, premiered at the Public Theater in New York as part of the New Works Now Festival. His most recent work Ravenshead, a solo two-act opera written in collaboration with composer Steven Mackey premiered at Penn State University and was subsequently shown in New York at the Miller Theater, Columbia University.
Commissioning Organizations
Asia Society is America's leading institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. A nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution, the Asia Society presents a wide range of programs including major art exhibitions, media programs, international conferences and lectures, and initiatives to improve elementary and secondary education about Asia. Since 1960, Asia Society's Cultural Programs division has been one of the country's leading centers devoted to the visual and performing arts of Asia. As a part of the Society's mandate to serve as a bridge between the peoples of America and Asia, one of the goals of the Cultural Programs division is to present contemporary work from Asia and highlight work by emerging Asian American artists.
Recent projects of the performing arts programs include commissioning and producing Forgiveness by Chen Shi-Zheng, Akira Matsui and Eve Beglarian; Empty Tradition/City of Peonies by choreographer Yin Mei and composer Tony Prabowo; presentations of renowned Iranian singer Sharam Nazeri; the Mongolian musical ensemble Altai Hungai; the national tour of Ratan Thiyam's Chorus Repertory Theatre of Manipur; Cloudgate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and most recently the chamber opera The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown by Jason Kao Hwang and Catherine Filloux.
New England Foundation for the Arts has been a significant cultural force since 1975. It was created as one of seven regional arts agencies nationwide, funded primarily through the National Endowment for the Arts and state arts agencies. NEFA soon began to stand out as a leader in identifying opportunities to advance the arts regionally and influence them nationally, and as a developer of initiatives that attracted private philanthropic support. The broadly based thinking that has characterized NEFA throughout its history has combined regional perspectives with national and international aspirations, emphasized collaboration, and opened doors to new resources.
Today's NEFA bears little resemblance to the original regional model, which focused on a limited palette of programs, and served primarily as a mechanism for distributing NEA and state funding on a regional basis. Today's NEFA features three funds - Creation and Presentation, Culture in Community, and Connections - that support the creation and distribution of new work in the arts, the linking of culture with community development, and the advancement of the cultural field through research and technology. NEFA supports both the visual and performing arts, such as dance and music.
The Hong Kong Arts Festival is a major international arts festival as well as the premier arts event in Hong Kong. Featuring overseas and local artists of renown in an eclectic array of music, theatre, dance, popular entertainment, film and exhibition programs, the Festival offers a three-to-four-week-long cultural feast annually from February to March.
This is an international arts festival in which the best of Asian and local talents are showcased alongside top artists from elsewhere around the world. The Festival provides a broad spectrum of programs, ranging from classical fare to other innovative and stimulating art forms. Indeed, the organizers not only make every effort to engage world-famous artists to perform in the Festival, but also bring in accomplished artists who display their talent in less familiar media. Some of the eminent artists and groups who have taken part in the Festival include the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, James Galway, Jose Carreras, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Moscow Art Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, the People's Art Theatre of Beijing, Yo-Yo Ma, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Philip Glass, Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Kunju Opera Troupe, Staatskapelle Dresden, Stuttgart Ballet, Tan Dun, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kirov Orchestra & Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. The Festival has also mounted significant exhibitions of Henry Moore sculptures, Qi Baishi paintings from the collection of the China National Art Gallery, contemporary Asian art works and contemporary photography from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
# # #
|
|
| Country Profiles |
 |
 |
| Find maps and statistics for Asian countries. You can also compare
statistics between countries by using our comparison tool. |
|
|
| AsiaSource Experts Database |
|
| Doing research for a story? Need someone to interview? Check out this database of scholarly experts on Asia. |
|
|
