Chen Qilian, the famous Chinese International Opera star, has said that her new year’s wish this year was to make more of the Chinese “fall in love” with international opera. She says that although the Chinese have first-class voices, and are appreciated world-wide when they sing international opera, they are not always appreciated at home.
Chen Qilian is due to complete her three-year contract with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music this fall, and talking about her departure, she says, “I’ll go back to Belgium this fall, so these may be my last two performances in Shanghai.” She is talking about her farewell concerts at the Yihai Theatre on February 14 and Shanghai Theatre on March 1. In these concerts she sang and will sing with the American-Chinese singer, Huo Lei, and the pianist, Wu Long, performing the works of Mozart and Puccini.
During the interview with Chen Qilian, the subject of last year’s Contemporary Music Concert of Guan, by Qu Xiaosong, was mentioned. It was a very popular choice for the audiences, particularly the Four Poems of Tang Dynasty, by Yang Liqing. Down-playing her talent, the star remarked that for a professional singer understanding and performing modern music is a basic skill but “opera is my favorite.”
Modest of her talents, Chen Qilian truly loves international opera. She has achieved great things with it too and has received many awards in Austria, Belgium, Holland and Italy. “I love the role of Madam Butterfly, of Cio-cio San, so much that even after 100 performances I couldn’t get tired of it.”
Studying under Jules Bastin in Belgium’s Royal Conservatory of Music, she received two higher degrees as an Opera Master and a Chamber Music Master in only two years. After many great performances, including Turandot, another of Puccini’s greats, Chen has come to understand her teacher’s words with more profound significance: “The light of your life will always belong on the stage.”
Although Chen does regret leaving Shanghai, she has had to sacrifice many performances to teach there and the opportunities to perform international opera in China are few. She says, “In three years, I have sung I love you, China at evening entertainments maybe 50 times but have sung opera less than one season abroad.”
This is not the only thing troubling the star. She knows that because of a lack of exposure to international opera, there are few audiences who want to listen to young and rising opera stars here. “I have found a lot of promising youngsters in my lectures but they are very short of stage performances,” she says. Her parting wish is that international opera becomes very popular and that the Chinese “fall in love with opera. It has a lot of first-class beautiful voices out in China but they cannot always serve a foreign audience.”
(China.org.cn by Chen Lin February 28, 2003)
