To most people on the island, the word opera brings to mind the Holo Taiwanese gezaisi--"song plays"--usually performed at temple celebrations, or their more upmarket cousin, jingju--Peking opera--beloved by the Nationalist soldiers who accompanied Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949. The Western form of opera was generally viewed as too esoteric, too difficult or just too expensive to stage for Taiwan's fickle audiences.
This was the state of affairs that Chien Wen-pin set out to challenge following his appointment as the NSO's musical director in 2001. Starting with Tosca in 2003, his opera oeuvre now contains the three collaborations between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte: "Don Giovanni," which the NSO staged in 2004, January 2006's "Cosi fan Tutte" and now "The Marriage of Figaro."
Chien's own collaborator for the Mozart series has been Stan Lai, artistic director of Performance Workshop, which itself has been accredited with creating a new audience for theater in Taiwan and throughout the Chinese-speaking world. Lai's two-decade career includes original works such as "The Peach Blossom Land" (1986) and "The Complete History of Chinese Thought" (1997), as well as Chinese-language premieres of Western works including "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (1995) and "Can't Pay, Won't Pay" (1998).
By bringing Lai on board, Chien no doubt hoped that some of his dedicated audience base would follow. Apparently, when he first approached Lai about taking on the role of stage director for the NSO production of "Don Giovanni," the latter responded that he was a playwright and director of modern theater. He indulged Chien, however, listened to Mozart's music and discovered that, as he told the Taiwan Journal shortly before the final dress rehearsal, "Mozart's operas are great theater." Like many a fellow convert, Lai has been an evangelist ever since. Even before finishing his work on "Don Giovanni," Lai had signed up to direct two more Mozart operas. Describing Taiwan as a country of "no opera culture," he said his aim was to help Taiwanese audiences take "a step closer to the unfamiliar art form."
He set "Don Giovanni" in a living room in contemporary Taipei. Two years later he returned, this time setting "Cosi fan Tutte" in the decadence of 1920s Shanghai. He chose that period, he explained, to mirror the decadence he felt characterizes Taiwan today. "The Marriage of Figaro" is set in China around 1905, just before the collapse of the increasingly corrupt Ching Dynasty, the end of imperial rule altogether, and the advent of republican government.
China of the late Ching, Lai said, had crucial similarities with French society before the revolution of the late 18th century, the period satirized in the libretto, even though the action is shifted to southern Spain. As he went on to explain, the opera is centered on relationships between the servant and noble classes, with the valet Figaro and his bride-to-be Susanna finally getting the better of their adversary Count Almaviva, who wishes to spoil their wedding night through recourse to droit du seigneur. Defeat of noblemen by commoners played a central role in both the French and Chinese revolutions.
Asked if he was also seeking to make a political point about contemporary Taiwan, in which the "political aristocrats" are overthrown by the "one-person-one-vote commoners," Lai said that he had been tempted but that "'Figaro' is a political statement in itself." He added, however, that setting it in the early 20th century had allowed him to include flash photography--employed in attempts to capture pictures of loving couples in the nighttime garden scene--and thus to comment on today's paparazzi.
"Of course," Lai said, "it is also a story about love but, ironically, no characters in this opera really profoundly understand what love is, even the Countess who, at the end, forgives her husband."
Moreover, Mozart and da Ponte's original was an opera buffa--comic opera--a style maintained in Lai's production through its essential elements of complicated love affairs, development of the characters' personalities, humorous dialogue and elegant melodies.
Given Lai's reputation for using improvisation and for adapting scripts, it is hard to believe that he would remain entirely faithful to the original. Nevertheless, apart from moving the time forward a century and the place eastwards several thousand miles--a perfectly acceptable practice--the artistic director protests that he did stick to the Mozart/da Ponte original. Where the Lai touch can be seen, he said, was in his desire to raise the theatrical element in an art form not known for focusing on that aspect. "When I started to work with the singers, some of them could not even walk across the stage properly," he explained.
Being faithful to Mozart, Lai said, has another meaning, that of letting the pure power of music take the audience to a beautiful level. Moreover, the singers' vocal performances should be capable of delivering the opera's meaning directly to the audience. "Directing opera is certainly different from directing theatre and, at the musical climax, I almost waived my power and had no influence on the stage performance," Lai insisted.
Speaking about his own development during the three years spent on this project, Lai said it was as if Mozart had been living within him and had become a part of his inner world. He learned much from Mozart and felt he had improved as a director. Asked whether he would work on operatic works in the future, he pointed at Chien and said "That's up to him." Lai added that the three Mozart/da Ponte collaborations work well as a whole, and he would be interested to see them staged together, "perhaps even in a single day."
Lai and Chien--who also conducted the three NSO Mozart works--laughed and joked their way through the press conference held before the final rehearsal like a couple of happy kids having fun. This spoke volumes about their love for the project and about the ease of their relationship. Indeed, taking turns at the microphone, both stressed the importance of the "Mozart ensemble" that they had managed to construct during the three-year, three-opera project and of the importance of continuity.
Bass-baritone Tsai Wen-hao, for example, who has the title role of Figaro, was Don Alfonso in "Cosi" and Leporello in "Giovanni," while soprano Chen Yen-ling, who plays wife-to-be Susanna, was Fiordiligi in "Cosi" and Donna Anna in "Giovanni." Similarly, Count Almaviva is sung by baritone Wubai Yu-hsi, who performed as Guglielmo in "Cosi" and as the title role in "Don Giovanni," while his wife, the Countess, is played by soprano Chen Mei-ling, who was Dorabella in "Cosi" and Donna Elvira in "Giovanni."
Lai admitted that he would feel some sadness at the end of this, his third and final Mozart opera, but that this would be offset by all the positive emotions, not to mention a great sense of achievement.
Indeed, while it would be fair to say that many in the audience at "Don Giovanni," the first of the Chien/Lai collaborations, were there to see how the famous theater director would stage an opera, things have moved on a pace since then.
With 98.7 percent of tickets for the June 30, July 2 and 4 performances at the 2,000-seat National Concert Hall sold out long before the curtain rose, as well as 89 percent of those for the July 7 performance at Hsinchu County's Cultural Affairs Bureau, it seems that Lai has perhaps gone at least some way toward attaining his goal of helping audiences take a step closer to opera.