Mythological Grandeur Qi Shu Fang and Peking Opera

Peking opera (jingju or jingxi, "theater of the capital,") is usually said to have been born in 1790, when the Sanqing drama troupe first brought its innovative art to the grand festivities in Beijing for the 80th birthday of the Qianlong emperor. It is a summation of a theater tradition that goes back to the beginning of the 12th century, and it builds on a vast body of yet more ancient culture and tradition. It can be difficult for Western audiences to really appreciate, but it is impossible not to admire. That was clear from the gasps of delight at last Saturday's performance of the Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.

The evening's performance was The Legend of the White Snake (Bai she zhuan) in a three-hour version. (19th century performances could last seven hours, performed over two to three days.) It was an astonishing fusion of song, dance, mime, acrobatics, and martial arts. Dressed in painted masks, shimmering silks, and rich plumage, the company of 40 exhausts superlatives. It was a revelation.

The involved story centers on Bai (Qi Shu Fang), a thousand-year-old snake whose mastery of Daoism gives her magical powers. Incarnated as an earthly woman, she falls hopelessly for the handsome young mandarin Xu (apparently either Shu Zhang or Xuguang Hou; hazy cast and crew listings on Peking opera playbills suggest a lack of unionization).

Diabolically set on cleaving the young lovers apart is the fanatical Buddhist abbot Fa Hai. Fa Hai summons heavenly warriors; Bai fights back with aquatic partisans invoked from the Yangtze. Epic battles and love scenes play out against simple, elegantly lush sets, unabashedly colorful but shy of Thomas Kinkade schmaltz. Simultaneous subtitles on a large, readable LCD screen onstage, a rare luxury for Peking opera performances, were invaluable in keeping up with the intricate plotting. They also boasted some adorably quaint turns of phrase, such as when Bai and Xu "committed the wedding process."

Perhaps more to the point of the evening is that Miss Qi sings a high-register coloratura that inspires spontaneous applause and can handle two swords while juggling. She is a prima donna, a prima ballerina, and a wu-dan woman warrior. She is 58 this year, and she looks luminous.

Miss Qi, among the foremost exponents of the Peking opera tradition in the United States, received a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush sent letters of congratulation, the latter curiously and repeatedly capitalizing the word 'Nation'. She is also a human chapter in the postwar history of Peking opera in China. An essay published in an old collection from the Foreign Languages Press, Peking, "Raid On the White Tiger Regiment--born and matured in struggle," celebrates that modern Peking opera as a blow struck for preserving the Chinese revolution:

"To carry out their plot for a capitalist restoration, the top capitalist roader in the Party, together with a handful of counter-revolutionary revisionists, had long tolerated emperors, princes, generals, ministers, scholars, beauties, ghosts and monsters dominating the arena of literature and art, thus turning it into a position for preparing public opinion in favour of a capitalist restoration ... [whereas] Chairman Mao teaches us: ... if you are a proletarian writer or artist, you will eulogize not the bourgeoisie but the proletariat and working people."

The officially sanctioned example of proletarian art was Raid on the White Tiger Regiment. Miss Qi performed excerpts from that opera on Friday night. The playbill reveals, with the modesty of concision, that she created the role of White Tiger's female lead in 1965, and that she played before Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. There is a memoir crying out to be written here.

The present author does not have a genuine background in East Asian music and culture, his acquaintance with a great-grand-nephew of Lafcadio Hearn notwithstanding, so it is difficult for him to assess the Qi Shu Fang production critically except to be awed. It is safe to say nonetheless that the genre will enthrall anyone who gives it a chance. Though the second week of performances have been cancelled at the Kaye, keep an eye out for the Qi Shu Fang company. The Chinese Theatre Works also performs periodically at Here Café. Seek them out. They won't disappoint.