【中文标题】中国歌剧：经典回归
【原文标题】Chinese Opera: Classical Returns
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/chinese-opera-classical-returns.html
《白蛇传》是中国最有名的神话故事之一，讲的是一位年轻的学者被一位化身美丽女人的白蛇怪施法的故事。这个故事引发了无数的中国影视作品、电影、电视剧。现在，它又有了一个用英文演绎的西方歌剧版本，观众可以以此来了解中国。《白蛇夫人》的编剧是堪萨斯的中国作曲家周龙，剧中的配乐是传统的欧洲歌剧音乐，但是也借鉴了中国的歌剧元素和传统的中国乐器，比如竹笛、笙和二胡——一种两弦提琴。
这部歌剧从诸多角度证明了中国在古典音乐领域中越来越重要的地位。古典音乐在中国文化大革命期间几乎泯灭殆尽，而现在，中国人在满怀热情地拥抱它。过去两年里，无数个城市都积极修建了大型音乐厅，有超过10场古典音乐节在这个国家举办。与此同时，据报道有数百万中国儿童在学习演奏西方乐器，希望成为下一个郎朗或李云迪。
中国对西方经典音乐的影响远不只是近期的几颗新星，而是浸入了音乐本身。近几年，一系列具有独特中国特色的西方歌剧在全球上演，包括盛宗亮的《毛夫人》（2003）、谭盾的《秦始皇》（2006）和郭文景的《诗人李白》（2007）。10月，由中国作曲家叶小纲编剧的四幕西方歌剧，暂定名为《霸王别姬》，即将在北京音乐节上演。今年早些时候在波士顿首次公演的《白蛇夫人》也将再次亮相。
虽然大部分致力于经典音乐剧的中国作曲家都在西方居住了10年以上，但也有一些是土生土长的中国人。他们似乎都热衷于同一个目标：以中国音乐为根基来探索经典管弦乐的边界。据此，他们在欧洲的经典音乐风格中加入了美声唱法的咏叹调和类似滑奏法的那种中文韵律的朗诵，还在乐池中点缀上中国乐器，比如琵琶和中国竹笛。他们还引入了一些中国舞蹈形式、中国的歌剧演唱技巧和视觉效果，比如中国歌剧服装和简洁的背景设置。《白蛇夫人》中有一位男性女高音，这明显是在向中国传统歌剧致敬：中国在20世纪末期的时候还只允许男性上台演出。
美国作曲家盛宗亮认为，从更深层次上来讲，这种趋势让“西方歌剧风格发生了微妙的美学变化”。这种变化可以在最近浦契尼的《图兰朵》演出中得到印证，中国戏剧的传统姿态偶尔被借用，在一个场景中，用一个平面角度展示出一幅中国绘画作品的两个维度。当代西方歌剧中还可以见到，其故事并没有像亚洲歌剧那样的线索，而是使用了很多抽象的情节。盛认为，中国戏剧和亚洲戏剧并不在故事的戏剧性情节上下太多的功夫，亚洲的观众一直以来更加关注的是中国戏剧中的表演如何，而不是故事情节如何展开——他们早已对情节了然于胸。例如，《诗人李白》中的一幕，其中并没有传统欧洲歌剧那样纷杂的情节。香港艺术节的执行董事Tisa Ho说：“台上的主角是诗、酒和月亮。没有情节，也没有传统场景中的戏剧性表演，但是这很有效。这是一部精彩的歌剧。”
音乐评论家Marc Rochester说，中国已经有了一些才华横溢的歌唱家，他们在西方歌剧中磨砺了自身的能力，现在他们又有了越来越多的本土作品可以表演。“我认为这些中国作曲家虽然身处西方，但创作一些表现自身‘中国性’的作品，是非常明智的做法。他们想的是，一旦那些歌剧院建成，他们手头已经有了一系列的中国歌剧可以立即上演。”还有那些来自国内外越来越多的热情观众，也在等待观看这些作品。
原文：
“The Legend of the White Snake” is one of the most famous Chinese tales. The story of a young scholar bewitched by a beautiful woman who is really a powerful white-snake demon has given rise to countless Chinese opera productions, films, and TV series. It is now also a Western-style opera performed in English that is set to tour China. Written by Kansas-based Chinese composer Zhou Long, the score of Madame White Snake follows musically in the grand tradition of European operas but also borrows from Chinese opera, integrating traditional Chinese instruments such as the bamboo and clay flute and the erhu, a two-string fiddle.
In many ways, the new opera exemplifies the rising importance of China on the Western classical-music scene. After years of completely shunning classical music during the Cultural Revolution, China has embraced it with gusto. In the last two years, countless municipalities have been hard at work building grand concert halls, and more than 10 classical-music festivals have been mounted throughout the country. At the same time, millions of Chinese children are reportedly learning to play Western musical instruments in the hopes of becoming the next Lang Lang or Yundi Li.
Chinese influence on Western classical music goes far beyond the rise of new star soloists; it’s affecting the music itself. In recent years a flurry of Western-style operas with distinctive Chinese flavors have premiered internationally, including Bright Sheng’s Madame Mao (2003), Tan Dun’s The First Emperor (2006), and Guo Wenjing’s Poet Li Bai (2007). In October a new four-act Western opera, tentatively called Farewell My Overlord and written by Chinese composer Xiaogang Ye, will premiere at the Beijing Music Festival, where Madame White Snake, first staged in Boston earlier this year, will be reprised.
Although most Chinese composers busily working on the classical-music scene have lived in the West for decades, a few are based in China. In any case, they all seem bound by a common objective: exploring the limits of classical orchestras while keeping in touch with their own Chinese musical roots. As such, they’ve infused the European classical-music genre known for its bel canto arias and recitatives with Chinese melodic elements such as glissandos, and peppered the orchestra pit with Chinese musical instruments like the 15-string zheng (a Chinese lute) and the Chinese bamboo flute. They’ve also introduced some Chinese dance forms and incorporated Chinese opera-singing techniques and visuals such as Chinese-opera costumes and simpler sets. Madame White Snake has a male soprano, a clear nod to the origin of Chinese opera: until as late as the 20th century, men were the only ones allowed to perform onstage.
The U.S.-based composer Bright Sheng believes that on a deeper level, these practices have created nothing less than “a subtle aesthetic change of the Western opera genre.” This can be seen in some recent stagings of Puccini’s Turandot, where traditional gestures from Chinese opera are now sometimes adopted, or set décors offer a flattened perspective reflecting the two-dimensionality of a Chinese painting. It can also be seen in contemporary Western operas that, while they don’t have Asian storylines, use more abstract plots. Chinese opera, and Asian opera in general, does not strive for the dramatic structure of Western operas, Sheng argues, pointing out that Asian audiences have traditionally been more interested in the actual execution of a performance in a Chinese opera rather than how the story—with which they are usually very familiar—unfolds. The one-act Poet Li Bai, for example, does not have much of a plot compared with a traditional European opera. “The characters are the poet, the wine, and the moon,” says Tisa Ho, executive director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. “There is no plot or dramatic action in the traditional sense, but it works. It is a wonderful opera.”
Music critic Marc Rochester points out that China already has “phenomenal” opera singers who are honing their skills on Western operas; now they have an expanding array of homegrown work to perform. “I think it is quite smart on the part of these Chinese composers, who are mainly based in the West, to write operas which express their Chinese-ness,” he says. “They’re thinking that when dedicated opera houses are built, they will already have a body of Chinese-composed operas to showcase.” And a growing base of enthusiastic fans, both local and international, for whom to perform them. |
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发表于 2010-7-17 21:04
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发表于 2010-7-17 21:25
