The world premiere of the classic Peking Opera The Women Generals of the Yang Family, in symphonic version, is to be part of the grand finale of the 2005 Beijing International Drama Festival.

"We carefully selected a production that combines the quintessence of the best Chinese culture and a Western art genre as the grand finale of a festival featuring productions from both home and abroad," said Zhang Shurong, director of the Big Events Office of the Cultural Bureau of Beijing.

The work is a joint production by the National Peking Opera Theater of China and the China Philharmonic Orchestra.

Featuring a star-studded crew and cast, the show will run for four nights from Wednesday to Saturday at Beijing's Poly Theater.

One of the most popular plays of Peking Opera, it tells the legendary Song Dynasty (960-1279) story of the famous women generals of the Yang Family.

The old widow She Taijun and her grand-daughter-in-law Mu Guiying, whose husband has just been killed on the battle field, lead other widows in the family to fight off the invaders.

Their menfolk have all laid down their lives defending the country, and they decide to take up the cudgel.

The National Peking Opera Theater of China commissioned a group of veteran artists to revive the classic repertoire, but with a contemporary touch.

They include Gong Guotai, composer with the Shanghai Peking Opera Theater, famous for his arrangement of old and new Peking Opera repertoires since the late 1960s.

Composer Zhao Jiping is also part of the production crew. His credits include scores for a number of award-winning TV series and movies such as Red Sorghum (1987) directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jiang Wen and Gong Li.

Set designer Zeng Li, who co-operated with Zhang Yimou for the opera Turandot at the Forbidden City (1997) and the ballet Raise the Red Lanterns and lighting designer Yi Liming, who worked for the Lincoln Center Festival's Kunqu Opera The Peony Pavilion, are also pitching in their expertise.

Composer Gong's arrangement of the Peking Opera tunes retains the rich flavor of the old art while Zhao has scored the symphonic prelude, intermezzo, chorus and epilogue, to enhance the show's musical ambience.

Lin Zhaohua, 69, and with experience of combining traditional Chinese local opera and contemporary theater, will direct the show, although traditional Peking Opera does usually not have a stage director.

Insiders have great expectations of Lin although he himself remains modest about his contribution.

Challenges

Yu Long, artistic director of the China Philharmonic Orchestra will lead his musicians to accompany the play off stage.

It is a great challenge for a Western-music-trained conductor to handle a Chinese local opera, which to a great extent has no fixed rhythm in any aria.

Deng Min, who performs Mu Guiying in the show, said: "Different genres have different principles.

"In Peking Opera, the accompanying musicians, usually a jinghu player and drummer, follow the speed and rhythm of the singer.

"However, in symphony, the conductor decides everything," Deng explained.

"So it was hard for us from the Peking Opera side and the orchestra to match each other well in the first few rehearsals. But we are managing to do that and some chemistry has happened," she added.

Their co-operation started three years ago with the staging of a concert version of selected arias.

But this time, it is a full-length play.

"This one is going smoother than last time when we first tried Peking Opera, but we still have much work to do," said Yu.

The conductor also revealed that until he led the short concert version three years ago, he had not appreciated what an amazing art genre Peking Opera is.

"I hope the beautiful old tunes can still appeal to the loyal Peking Opera fans, while the symphonic orchestration can draw some new audiences into the theater," he said.

All the crew share the view that symphonic Peking Opera is a way to promote Peking Opera, a way to popularize symphony and also a way of bringing some of the finest aspects of Chinese culture to an international production.

(China Daily April 26, 2005)