The 600-year-old Chinese Kunqu opera to enthral audiences in India for the first time

It took Swati Bhise almost three years to bring the mother of all Chinese operas to Indian shores. “We always have huge hurdles, but this was the biggest one,” says the 54-year-old danseuse and Artistic Director of Bravia Sadir Theatre Festival, an NGO dedicated to promoting arts and culture. “I was constantly told not to bother because ‘there’s no interest for it here’.”
The hurdles notwithstanding, Bhise’s efforts have borne fruit. The Chinese Kunqu (pronounced ‘kun-shu’) opera The Peony Pavilion will be performed for the first time in India this month. The first performance will be on December 9 in Mumbai’s NCPA and on December 12 in Delhi’s Siri Fort.

Kunqu, one of the world’s oldest opera forms, is listed by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). It is the genesis of over 300 Chinese operatic styles, including the renowned Cantonese and Peking operas. So vaunted is Kunqu that it has its own stage language, which sets it apart from Mandarin Chinese and other dialects.
Yet, the challenge of perception has been overwhelming. And not just in the case of Chinese opera, but its ‘Western’ counterpart too. Despite birthing a pool of acclaimed opera singers like Patricia Rozario and Anando Mukerjee, India is yet to witness a significant number of takers for this performance art. Then again, opera has seldom been popular in India.

“Professional training for opera is really expensive,” says Minaish Doctor, a soprano and course co-ordinator at Giving Voice to India, a platform for budding Western classical singers. It’s not just a requisite to enrol in a music college or conservatoire, but also to master Italian, German and French. “Possibly even Russian,” adds Suntook Khushroo, Chairman at NCPA. The rigour involved, explains Doctor, is significant. “We only start training at the age of 15 in the operatic style. Before that, children need to learn other forms of classical music that strengthen vocal chords. Learning an instrument and music theory is also a must,” she says.

Kunqu, being the hallowed 600-year-old art form that it is, can be even more demanding. “Professional training starts as early as age 11,” says Cao Ying, Vice President of Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre. Performers must also master stock movements and gestures, poetry and at least one or two instruments, such as the dizi, that make up the traditional ensemble. “Physical fitness is a daily regimen to hone on-stage balancing poses,” adds Ying.

The emphasis on gestures is perhaps the main differentiator between Western and Chinese opera styles. And it’s not just movements that convey certain situations and character traits. Since stage props are a bare minimum in Kunqu as compared to Western opera, costumes and make-up play pivotal roles. White facial make-up, for example, embodies cunning, while black represents a straightforward nature and red, loyalty. As far as costumes go, Kunqu is distinctive with its use of long, white ‘water sleeves’ that enhance on-stage movements.

The differences between Chinese and Western opera, however, haven’t come in the way of common ground. In a 2012 article for The New York Times, W. Anthony Sheppard wrote about his discovery of a 19th century music box with six Chinese tunes. These tunes, he said, were sources for two themes in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, one of the world’s most famous operas.

Sheppard, professor and chair of music at Williams College in Massachusetts and editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, has lots to say about bridges between Western and Chinese opera. “Tan Dun’s The First Emperor brought together elements of Chinese and European opera. And Dun, along with Peter Sellars, attempted to modernise The Peony Pavilion,” Sheppard tells dna. Hybrid operas drawing on Western and Chinese traditions are increasingly finding their way on the stage.

But what do purists make of hybrid operas? Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre’s Ying believes most attempts to modernise The Peony Pavilion are bad. “In their willingness to embrace modern elements, they’ve thrown out the essence of the art form,” he feels. NCPA’s Khushroo thinks most experiments are distasteful to the maturity of traditional operas. Minaish Doctor too feels many are unimpressive. “Some of the ones I watched were so over-the-top modern that the storyline got completely lost.” Doctor, who watched one Chinese opera in Beijing, didn’t care much for it. “It wasn’t melodious to my ears. I’m sure there are many apart from the Chinese who appreciate this style, but I’m not one of them,” she says.
But at the end of the day, what matters is the accessibility of a rarefied art form for the masses. And that’s what Swati Bhise has set out to do. “Many say we should have an audience for Indian art first. But my belief,” she says, “is that art has no barriers.”

About The Peony Pavilion

Written in the 16th century by Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion is the most popular classical opera of the Ming dynasty and indeed, in all of China. Often referred to as ‘China’s Romeo & Juliet’, The Peony Pavilion is an opera about love, death and resurrection. Centering on a love story between Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei, it has subplots pointing to the rise of the Jin dynasty against the gradual fall of the Song dynasty.
More than just a love story set in a feudalistic society, The Peony Pavilion was an indictment of the ‘extreme’ rationalism expounded by Neo-Confucianists. In its original form, the opera spans 55 scenes and over 400 arias (expressive melodies).