An idea that was planted in New York seven years ago and slowly germinated, as it traveled around the world and back to the United States, is finally set to flower this summer at the Central City Opera.
Diana Liao’s desire to create a libretto based on the life of Li Bai, a celebrated Tang Dynasty poet, is being transformed by composer Guo Wenjing into an 80-minute opera that will receive its world premiere during six performances July 7-28.
“Poet Li Bai” will mark the 20th anniversary of Asian Performing Arts Colorado, a volunteer organization that has spearheaded the international efforts to bring the opera to fruition for the Central City Opera’s 75th anniversary.
The work will come at a pivotal moment, when operas by the first group of Chinese composers after the Cultural Revolution are drawing international headlines. Tan Dun’s “The First Emperor,” for example, debuted in December before sold-out audiences at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
“Poet Li Bai” has already attracted attention in the Asian press, and publicist Joanna Lee expects a contingent of Chinese critics will attend the premiere.
All in the family
That a Chinese opera born in New York City will eventually make its way to Colorado is all the result of family connections. It so happens that Liao’s brother-in-law is Hao Jiang Tian, an internationally renowned bass who finished his graduate studies at the University of Denver.
He is married to Liao’s sister, Martha, president of Asian Performing Arts Colorado, which has sponsored many other major projects, including the 2003 regional premiere of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion After St. Matthew.” She has served as coordinator for this project.
Diana Liao, who has collaborated with Tan Dun before, conceived of an operatic treatment of Li Bai while working as an interpreter at the United Nations.
She and playwright Xu Ying, with whom she worked on two previous operas, researched the poet, even traveling days by train and boat to visit Chongqing and other places in China that inspired his writing. Liao put the libretto’s first lines on paper during a stay in Kingston, Jamaica, in summer 2001.
The work, originally written in English and translated into Chinese by Xu Ying, takes place during a night on a houseboat when the poet (Tian) contemplates his life during exchanges with his two muses – Wine (tenor Zhou Hao) and Moon (soprano Ying Huang).
“I included some of the well-known facts but concentrated on imagining his inner dialogue as a poet with astounding talents and as an ordinary man regretting his mistakes and hoping for a better future,” Liao said by e-mail from Hong Kong.
“The opera can be enjoyed as a musical sketch of Li Bai the poet, his life and a taste of his poetry. It can also be taken as the perennial query: Who am I? What have I done with my life? What is it that I want?”
In late 2002, Liao presented the first draft of the libretto to Tian as a gift. As a student during the Cultural Revolution, he received almost no exposure to traditional Chinese literature but came to appreciate it later, memorizing as many as 30 of Li Bai’s poems.
“I started working in the factory when I was 15 1/2 and I started trying to find other books to read, because I was thirsty for something besides all the revolutionary music and studies,” Tian said from New York City. “Of course, I started with Western classics, and I also I picked up Li Bai’s poems.”
Spawns an odyssey
The gift set off an odyssey of selecting a composer and, perhaps more important, finding an opera company that would present the work.
Tian first asked Tan Dun, whom he has known since 1991, if he would be interested in writing the music. But the composer had to decline because of the Met commission and other projects.
Tian next turned to another widely known Chinese composer, Chen Yi, also an admirer of Li Bai. She agreed immediately but had to drop out of the project, when funding was not immediately forthcoming, because of other work.
Finally, Guo Wenjing took on the opera, and he is putting the final touches on the music now. The bass heard the composer’s well-reviewed opera “The Night Banquet” at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City in 2002. He also attended a performance of the composer’s music at the Julliard School.
“After the performance, he talked to the audience, and I liked the way he talked – not too aggressive, very calm, with simple explanations,” Tian said. “I felt right away that I could relate to him, so I started to approach him.”
Based on Guo’s advice, Tian chose Lin Zhaohua as the production’s stage director. He first gained fame in China with controversial stagings of avant-garde plays following the Cultural Revolution. Yi Liming is the set and costume designer.
An issue of distance
The participants gathered for a preliminary workshop in July in Beijing, and another was planned for this month, but Tian had to cancel it because of an engagement in Italy. A two-week workshop is now set for May, with rehearsals scheduled to start June 12.
“I wish we were a little further along, but the distance issue is a big one ultimately, as far as me being able to push to get designs done and sent to me for approval and those sorts of things,” said Pat Pearce, Central City Opera’s general and artistic director, “but I’m confident that it’s all going to come together at the right moment.”
Central City Opera’s involvement in the project dates to around October 2005, when one of its board members was on a private flight from New York with members of Asian Performing Arts and the subject of “Poet Li Bai” was raised.
That encounter led to a meeting between Pearce and Tian and Martha Liao in February 2006, and Central City signed on soon thereafter. Pearce was initially attracted to the project because of his respect for Tian and was sold when he heard Guo’s music.
“I was really impressed with the way he wrote for the voice,” Pearce said. “In a lot of contemporary music, as good as the composer may be in orchestration and all the rest, they’ve lacked a sense of how to show off (a vocal) instrument, how to let an instrument soar. And if a voice doesn’t soar, it doesn’t offer an opportunity for expression.”
Typically, an opera company would have been involved much earlier in a project of this kind, and, even now, Pearce has put unusual trust in an outside organization because of his faith in the participants.
For Tian, the process of producing an opera has been enjoyable but also grueling.
“In the beginning, it was more romantic, imagining that we would have a new opera,” Tian said. “But later, I became more nervous. Even though I sing in the opera world, I never realized how difficult, how much work there is when you want to put together an opera.”
He doesn’t want to oversell the result, but he is confident “Poet Li Bai” will be a success.
“I just pray and hope that it will be a opera that people will love,” he said.
“Poet Li Bai”
OPERA | Central City Opera House, 124 Eureka St.; 8 p.m. July 7 and 13, 2:30 p.m. July 15, 8 p.m. July 20 and 2:30 p.m. July 26 and 28 | $43-$87 | 303-292-6700 or centralcityopera.org.
