Opera

The Butterfly Lovers
Wild Rice & Victorian Opera
Victoria Theatre
Wednesday, 7.30pm

This is a beautiful, although slightly culturally confused, introduction of the Chinese opera form to a wider Singaporean audience by Wild Rice and Melbourne-based Victorian Opera.

Its real star is the intricate xifu (Chinese opera costumes) designed by Max Tan, which offer visual spectacle to a familiar story, although this is rendered strangely limp by a plot choice that removes much of the will-they-won’t-they homoeroticism in the original.

One of the four great folk tales of China, The Butterfly Lovers tells the tragedy of star-crossed lovers Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, who develop feelings for each other in a school in the Eastern Jin dynasty (AD266 to AD420).

This being ancient China, academic learning is reserved for men. Zhu shrouds herself in male disguise, and Liang and Zhu’s transgressive, ambiguous attachment to each other develops with the bookish Liang none the wiser, a conceit that traditionally allows for much confused pining.

This version, conceived and directed by Chinese opera-trained Ivan Heng, however, has Liang falling head over heels for Zhu almost at first sight. The run, till Sunday, is sold out.  

It is an artistic choice that conceptually queers the relationship, but in practice takes away a lot of the humour in the popular tale.

In falling in love with Zhu, Liang never questions his own sexuality; the ease with which he pursues Zhu does not so much naturalise same-sex relationships as ignore the aspect of their gender completely. It is a short-circuit that feels slightly disingenous, and which undermines the believability of their love.

That said, Zhu, channelled by award-winning Australian soprano Cathy-Di Zhang, is a very able dan, the female lead in Chinese opera.

Her chemistry with Liang (Austin Haynes) could be better, but Chinese opera has always relied less on emotional expression than formalised, symbolic actions.

In this regard, the two do well, though there is scope for more committed, exaggerated movements.

While this stylised mode in an English performance may take some getting used to, it is part of a hybridity in which this cross-cultural production finds most joy.

The music composed by Victorian Opera artistic director Richard Mills is intriguing, blending the pentatonic scale and melismatic flaunting of traditional Chinese opera with an eight-member chorus (unusual in Chinese operas) and a string quartet.

Bass drums and a snare join the dizi (Chinese flute) and pipa (lute) in scene-setting and, though there are brief moments when the music slips into Western homophony, much of it is modern and a revel of atonality.

The same cross-fertilisation can be said of Joel Tan’s libretto, though there is an inescapable inorganic quality to it, an impression of simulacrum when one bears in mind the poetics of corresponding Chinese expressions. (“Soul spool” is one example.)

Brian Gothong Tan’s stock multimedia projections elevates proceedings to kitsch territory – a choice that just about works, though this reviewer wonders if projections of Chinese paintings might not achieve the same effect in a more dignified way.

At its core, The Butterfly Lovers is a valiant work of transcreation – from Chinese folklore and Chinese operatic form to a new English-language mode, arguably something bicultural Singapore is especially well-placed to do.

The novelty of it certainly leaves a lasting impression and, in time, it could develop its own history and traditions.

This English-language version of what has been called the Chinese Romeo And Juliet, however, needs less Romeo and Juliet, and more Twelfth Night. Somehow, it manages to take itself too seriously and not seriously enough at the same time.