CAI SHAOHUA, director of the Suzhou Kun Opera Theatre's The Palace of Eternal Youth, describes the story of the lost Chinese opera classic as being 'a little like Romeo and Juliet'. In the eighth century, Tang dynasty emperor Xuanzong fell in love with Yang Guifei, a beautiful young woman he saw on a trip outside the palace. As his infatuation deepened, he designated her first among his thousands of concubines, and went to great lengths to keep her happy - bringing hundreds of dancers and musicians to entertain her, and ordering horsemen to ride day and night to carry fresh fruit to her from the cities of Xian and Guangzhou.
But Xuanzong's infatuation had serious repercussions for the empire. As he increasingly neglected his imperial duties to spend time with Yang, the state began to suffer from corruption and factionalism. To solve the problem, the army forced Yang to commit suicide. She hanged herself with a silk cord.
Cai says 'the characters in the opera are more interesting than the characters in Shakespeare's play'. He's staging a modern version during the upcoming Hong Kong Arts Festival. The original, at more than eight hours, was one of the longest to be staged in China in the 19th and 20th centuries, and gave the actors a chance to fully develop their roles. When the story was first adapted for Kunju, the earliest form of Chinese opera, during the Qing dynasty, it was typically staged over three days, had 50 acts and lasted more than 20 hours.
'Then, people watched operas for whole days at a time,' Cai says. 'It was their basic form of entertainment.' But in the first half of the 20th century, wars and political turmoil disrupted the ruling elite, and The Palace of Eternal Youth wasn't performed. Amid the economic rebirth of the 80s and 90s, when western entertainment filtered into China and opera became less popular, theatre companies couldn't afford to perform the piece, which requires more than 60 actors.
That threatened to relegate the opera, written by dramatist Hong Sheng, to the dustbin of history. 'This is a Chinese masterpiece,' says Cai. 'And for more than a century, no one has staged so complete a performance.' [Groups have occasionally truncated the story for small ensembles and shorter shows.]
So, when the Suzhou Kun Opera Theatre performs at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in March, it will take a step towards resurrecting both the work and Kunju Opera itself.
