Shanghai Jingju Theatre Hong Kong Cultural Centre Grand Theatre November 7 The illustrious Shanghai Jingju (Peking Opera) Theatre staged Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy at the Hong Kong Chinese Opera Festival last week before an enthusiastic local audience.
During the traumatic Cultural Revolution, Tiger Mountain was among the handful of so-called modern revolutionary Peking Operas that swept on to the scene as the only legitimate artistic expressions on stage, film and TV and in the concert hall throughout China, all other traditional forms of music and theatre being banned. Madame Mao gathered a group of top composers and performers and reformed the traditional Peking Opera to tell contemporary revolutionary stories, blatantly converting it into a political tool.
Viewed from a distance of 30 years, Tiger Mountain remains endlessly intriguing. Ideologically, how do we react to the arias 'I've the morning sun in my heart' or 'We'll wipe out the reactionaries'? Dramatically, how do we accept the saintly PLA and the childlike peasant folk? When the hero, with tears in his eyes, proclaimed his most powerful weapon to fight the villains was 'a loyal heart of a PLA soldier dedicated to the party and Chairman Mao' the audience burst out laughing.
Artistically, how do we respond to having the traditional tunes dressed up with full Western-style accompaniment with strings and clenched fists (minus the long sleeves), and to the transformation of original Peking Opera gestures and movements by modern choreography? Yet somehow they all hold together: the ideology of a different era, much like a Ming Dynasty fable, the cartoonish characterisations, and the pompous music and gestures.
This opera has become a classic, offering the audience a detached view of a snippet of history for reflection and interpretation, dressed up in artistic language both old and new, and offering possibilities for future development.
