The University of Chicago is in the midst of a five-month immersion in Chinese art and culture with exhibits, performances and other events scattered around the campus. On Saturday night the Tianjin Peking Opera Company appeared at Logan Center Performance Hall with excerpts from three famous comic operas. It was a fast-paced if long evening sparkling with not-so-blushing maidens, an emperor who goes slumming and a fearless warrior rather the worse for too much sweet wine.
Peking Opera doesn’t mean an opera company based in China’s leading city. It’s a generic term like opera or musical theater. Using stock characters and brilliantly colored costumes, its mix of spoken dialogue, singing, acrobatics and dance emerged in the late 18th century and eventually became a dominant cultural form in China. The Tianjin Peking Opera Company is relatively new, formed in the port city of 12 million near Beijing in 1995. Its leading actor, Ling Ke, wants to take a fresh look at traditional Peking opera, and judging from Saturday’s performance, he and his colleagues are succeeding.
The company obviously prizes the 21st century virtues of tight pacing, rapid-fire dialogue and razor-sharp physical moves. English and Chinese supertitles made it easy to follow the action. Even without long-lined, lyrical melodies, there were little tunes you could whistle.
But excerpts from “A Dragon Flirts with a Phoenix,” “Wu Song Kills the Tiger” and “The Ghost of the Black Pot’’ also offered the elements Westerners associate with Chinese opera. Yan Hongyu, the opera’s gifted female comedian, spoke in high-pitched, often sing-song phrases. When the characters broke into song, their sound was thin and reedy. While western opera singers identify themselves by voice type (soprano, baritone), Peking opera performers focus on character types (flirtatious female lead, older male lead). The six-piece orchestra bristled with sharp, clanging cymbals, the relentless dry slap of clappers and drum and the rasp of a bow against fiddle string.
Above all, however, the Tianjin Peking Opera performance made it clear that the overriding goal was familiar and universal: to tell a rattling good yarn.
Ling Ke and Yan (husband and wife in real life) got things off to a sprightly start in “A Dragon Flirts with a Phoenix.” Its two scenes were long. but the tale of an emperor traveling around his country incognito and a quick-witted barmaid was charming. Slim and youthful but sporting a wispy beard and speaking in the slow, portentous phrases of an older male lead, Ling was both imperious and genuinely smitten. Yan was a wonder, skittering about with tiny steps and speaking in a voice reminiscent of Betty Boop and Gracie Allen. But when the saucy barmaid turned pouty, it was clear that the brain inside that pretty little head was working at warp speed.
In “Wu Song Kills the Tiger,” Wang Daxing’s handsome warrior devoured the stage. Rearing back on one leg, preparing to attack in deep lunges, he mixed the rock-solid balance and sleek line of a seasoned dancer with the wily power of a martial artist.
A tasty night at the opera, Peking-style.