A role for cross-Straits relations
A shooting star, falling diagonally across an already star-clustered sky, was an overwhelming image in a traditionalist staging of Verdi's Rigoletto last weekend.
Coming shortly after the heroine Gilda's first entrance, the star was a silent stage effect of incomparable beauty. That it fell so dramatically in the Taiwanese provincial city of Taichung on a cold, still January night before a largely young audience somehow made it all the more satisfying.
Meanwhile in Taipei, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman was being staged in semi-modernistic style by Swiss director Guy Montavon. Several imported soloists enlivened the musical performance, but the direction had the prow of the Dutchman's ship tearing through a surrealistically painted paper backdrop to dubious effect.
That there were two Western operas playing in Taiwan in the same week cannot be taken as indicative of the state of the art there. Four such productions a year is the norm in Taiwan. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic reception given to each testified to the vigour of this imported form in the musically sophisticated island.
'They can't afford such a spectacular production as this Rigoletto in Europe,' said Beijing-born tenor Xu Linqiang, of the Taiwan production, the staging of which was so traditionally conceived that in many ways it must have been similar to that of its first production in Italy a century and a half ago.
'There the star soloists cost them so much there's little left for the sets, so bleak modernism has to be the fashion.' Mounted at a cost of about $4.86 million, Rigoletto is touring the island this month with an all-Chinese cast, and two soloists singing the major roles on alternate nights. Xu still sings in his native country, and was Calaf in a Beijing Turandot last year.
Xu sings the role of the duke in the 'A' cast, while Taiwan's Fernando Wang is the lecherous aristocrat with cast 'B'.
Both singers are now resident abroad, but the cross-Straits co-operation their presence in this production represents is indicative of the good state of cultural relations between the 'two Chinas', despite cooler relations on the political front.
The production boasted two outstanding young Gildas in Chen Li-chiang and Lin Hwei-jen. It would be difficult indeed to choose between them - Chen the gentler, Lin the more skittish - but both of them vocally ravishing and operatic stars in the making.
Neither Rigoletto nor The Flying Dutchman offered sur-titles, though Rigoletto had projected pre-scene summaries on two home movie-style screens.
'This is an educational as well as an entertainment venture,' said Rigoletto director Tzeng Dao-hsiung, a professor in the Music Department at the National Taiwan Normal University.
'We last did Rigoletto in 1981 and then I not only sang the title role in all the performances but was the director, chorus master and stage manager as well. We've moved on somewhat since then.' At the end, bizarrely, the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra was winched into view like an old cinema organ to rapturous applause, and there followed the virtually indiscriminate presentation of bouquets by children in track suits.
But this was a fine Rigoletto, beautiful to look at, vigorously sung and accompanied with panache by the orchestral musicians under, on alternate nights, director David Chen and assistant conductor Chen Shu-si.
It is the case with shooting stars that they always take you by surprise, and when you look for one they rarely happen.
The Rigoletto was an unexpected delight.
