OPERA FENG YI TING AMERICAN PREMIERE FIRST STAGED PRODUCTION CO-PRODUCED BY SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA, CURRENTS–ART & MUSIC, AND LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL Composed by Guo Wenjing Sung in Chinese with English supertitles First Performance March 6, 2004; Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands Dock Street Theatre May 27 and 29 at 8:00pm; June 1, 4, and 7 at 8:00pm SPONSORED BY BMW MANUFACTURING CO. Conductor Ken Lam Director Atom Egoyan Scenic Designer Derek McLane Costume Designer Han Feng Lighting Designer Matt Frey Video Designer Tsang Kin-Wah Projection Designer Cameron Davis CAST (in order of vocal appearance) Diao Chan Shen Tiemei Lü Bu Jiang Qihu Supernumerary William Stancil MUSICIANS Pipa Chen Yihan Dizi Hong-Da Chin Erhu, gaohu Wang Guowei Sheng Wang Hong Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra Assistant Conductor Aik Khai Pung Assistant Director Kara Riopelle Production Stage Manager Becca Eddins Scenic Construction Spoleto Festival USA Scene Shop Costume Construction Shanghai Sheng Xie Co., Ltd. Libretto Translator Jiang Yipeng Libretto Editor John Githens PERFORMED WITHOUT AN INTERMISSION. Additional support for Feng Yi Ting is provided by The Asian Cultural Council, The Brand Foundation of New York, Inc., and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Opera programming is endowed by the Arthur and Holly Magill Foundation. Currents–Art & Music is grateful for the support of Oscar L. Tang, the Tang Family Foundation, and its board members, for their contributions, namely, Barbara Goldsmith, Marie-Monique Steckel, Christopher Enock, Barbara Hoffman, and Sarina Tang. By arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes Inc., Sole Agent in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for Casa Ricordi/Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.R.l., publisher and copyright owner. 31 OPERA FENG YI TING DIRECTOR’S NOTE GUO WENJING (composer) was born in In her prologue, a beautiful courtesan reveals a plan that will 1956 in China’s Sichuan province. In 1978 change the history of a nation. What is immediately striking about he was one of 100 students admitted out Guo Wenjing’s arresting interpretation of the classic tale of Feng of 17,000 applicants to Beijing’s reopened Yi Ting is the rich artistic alchemy of the work—the powerful Central Conservatory of Music. Unlike many setting of traditional vocal lines against contemporary musical colleagues from this acclaimed class (Tan tonalities. This approach gives us a sense of the story’s past while Dun, Chen Yi, Zhou Long), Guo remained exploring new ways of expressing it. in China after graduation except for a short Designer Derek McLane and I first worked together 16 years stay in New York on an Asian Cultural Council ago on a production of Richard Strauss’s revolutionary opera grant. Guo’s catalogue includes four chamber operas. Wolf Cub Salome. Like Feng Yi Ting, Salome is a story about a woman Village (1994), based on Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, was who concocts a sexual plan that ends in violence and murder. premiered at the Holland Festival. Night Banquet (1997–98/2001), While the tone and motivations of these two stories are very inspired by a painting of Song dynasty court official Han Xizai, was different, both center on women who become increasingly first produced in London and Hong Kong; a second version of the resistant to men’s efforts to educate them. Both Salome and the work was also given in Paris, Berlin, New York, and Perth. Feng Yi courtesan Diao Chan have an appointed station in the ancient Ting (2004), written for a Beijing opera tenor and a Sichuan opera civilizations in which they live, and both take possession of men’s soprano, premiered at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Poet Li imposed cultural campaigns. In the respective stories, there is a Bai (2007), an opera about the famous Tang dynasty poet, received war fought very much on the battlefield of words and images, its world premiere at Central City Opera’s Summer Festival. Guo’s with extraordinary music giving us access to the psychological music first became known in the West in 1983, when Suspended underpinnings of the provocative narratives. Ancient Coffins on the Cliffs in Sichuan was premiered in Berkeley, In the mid-’90s, Derek and I used the technologies available California.His orchestral works include concertos for erhu, bamboo to us to augment the story of Salome with visual projections. flute, violin, cello, and harp; Shu Dao Nan, a symphonic poem with At the time, we were still working in a largely analog world, and voices; and Journeys, for soprano and orchestra. Guo’s chamber the projections were a combination of 16mm film, glass slides, music includes works for traditional Western string quartets and traditional shadow play. Theatrical tools have changed and percussion ensembles; Late Spring for Chinese ensemble; radically since then, and this production of Feng Yi Ting utilizes and Sound from Tibet, combining instruments from China and the the sensitive digital manipulations of the Hong Kong–based artist West. He has also composed numerous scores for Chinese cinema Tsang Kin-Wah to visually convey the complex strains of the and television. Guo Wenjing has been honored as one of China’s vocal lines. The seductive effect of words set to such powerful Top 100 Living Artists. and emotive music is enhanced by the graphic and “living” representation of the text itself. CREATIVE TEAM In conversations with costume designer Han Feng, we further explored the sharp contrast between old and new that was at KEN LAM (conductor) is the winner of the the heart of this production. We decided to move away from the 2011 Memphis International Conducting image of the female character as mysterious and unfathomable, Competition. Currently he serves as Orchestra and present her as a confident and contemporary figure. Although Director at Montclair State University in New she is a masterful manipulator of desire and affection, Diao Chan Jersey, Resident Conductor of the Brevard Music is not presented as a classic seductress. The very manner in Center in North Carolina, and Artistic Director of which she conveys her plan to us suggests a disturbing matter-of- the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestra. Lam factness, which is cool and unexpected. was Principal Conductor of the Hong Kong This telling of Feng Yi Ting is quite unlike the fin-de-siècle Chamber Orchestra from 2001 to 2007, and spectacle of Salome where a woman kills her “lover” out of made his U.S. professional debut in 2008 with the National Symphony distorted passion. This is a story of carefully planned murder; a Orchestra at the Kennedy Center as one of four conductors selected sexual coup d’état. Though we might recognize Diao Chan as a by Leonard Slatkin. The following year, he was a featured conductor in classic femme fatale, she is ultimately serving a plot which has the League of American Orchestras’ Bruno Walter National Conductors been carefully laid out before her. Feng Yi Ting condenses classic Preview with the Nashville Symphony. Lam has also appeared with operatic themes of passion, jealousy, and revenge into a compact the Cincinnati, St. Louis, Memphis, Illinois, and Baltimore symphony machine. It’s the aim of this creative team to display the workings orchestras. Last season he gave concerts with the Hong Kong of this machine in all of its ruthless and beguiling efficiency. Philharmonic, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and Taipei Symphony Orchestra. – Atom Egoyan In opera, Lam regularly conducts with the Janiec Opera Company at Brevard and was Assistant Conductor at both Cincinnati Opera and Baltimore Lyric Opera. He was Assistant Conductor to Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival for two Britten chamber opera productions. Recently he led an acclaimed production of Massenet’s Manon for Peabody Opera Theatre. Lam studied economics at St. John’s College, Cambridge University, and worked in international law and record label management before embarking upon his career in music. 32 OPERA FENG YI TING ATOM EGOYAN’s (director) films have MATT FREY’s (lighting designer) recent work includesLonely? I’m been presented around the world, winning not… for Second Stage Theatre, The Ugly One for Soho Rep, Close five major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival Up Space for Manhattan Theatre Club, and Go Back to Where You (including the Grand Prix), two Academy Are for Playwrights Horizons (New York); 7 Homeless Mammoths Award nominations, and numerous other Wander New England for Two River Theatre (New Jersey); This for honors. His films have won over 25 Genie Center Theatre Group (Los Angeles) and Playwrights Horizons (New Awards, including three Best Film awards, York); Middletown for Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Chicago); from the Academy of Canadian Film Woodysez (London’s West End); and Freefall at the Corn Exchange and Television. Egoyan’s work has been (Dublin). Frey’s upcoming projects include Dog Days, directed by presented in several international retrospectives, including a Robert Woodruff for Peak Performances (Montclair State University, complete career overview at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, New Jersey). He has also collaborated with Brooklyn Academy of followed by similar events at the Filmoteca Espagnol in Madrid Music, Naked Angels, The New Group, Manhattan Class Company, and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Before his New York Theatre Workshop, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Paper film career, Egoyan wrote and directed plays in his hometown Mill Playhouse, as well as many other theaters, regional and abroad. of Victoria and then in Toronto, where he was part of the inaugural Playwrights Unit at Tarragon Theatre. He returned HAN FENG (costume designer) is to stage directing in 1996 with Salome for the Canadian Opera one of the world’s leading clothing and Company, a production later presented by Houston Grand Opera accessories designers, increasingly sought as well as several other successful remounts.