nunia
[个人文集]
加入时间: 2005/11/04
文章: 2184
经验值: 5079
|
|
|
作者：nunia 在 寒山小径 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
“Geographical Dialogues”
Publishing Date: February, 2006
Author: Roger M. Smith
Published by: New Zealand International Arts Festival
Scratch the surface of an American opera from the last ten years or so and you are likely to expose a rich vein of Americana. If Tobias Picker’s recent MetropolitanOpera commission An American Tragedy is anything to go by, there is still plenty of mileage left in the Great American Dream – right down to the aspirational Model TFord wheeled-on as a lavish piece of set-dressing. The best of these works prove that the Great American Opera is as good a vehicle as any for a critique of that GreatAmerican Dream.
Picker’s exposé of social ambition and fall from grace is only the latest in a line of high-profile operas to explore American themes, dreams and frailties. WilliamBolcom’s self-avowed mission to create a uniquely American opera from Arthur Miller’s play A View from the Bridge (1999) was widely successful. So too was AndréPrevin’s 1998 operatic makeover of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. John Harbison’s take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby (1999) wasless well received, failing, perhaps, to live up to the huge expectations of a new Metropolitan Opera commission. On the other side of the ledger, Jake Heggie’s firstopera, Dead Man Walking (2000), a risky proposition for San Francisco Opera, became an extraordinary popular success. The satisfactory transition from book tocinema screen to operatic stage was by no means guaranteed for a story involving a young nun who befriends a convicted murderer on Death Row.
Where then does the Chinese born American composer Tan Dun sit on the landscapeof contemporary opera? Tan, a New York resident for the last twenty years and winner of an Academy Award for the film score to Ang Lee’s martial artsextravaganza Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is now the recipient of a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. But his new work, The First Emperor of China, due forproduction later this year, shines a spotlight on a culture worlds apart from that of twentieth-century America. The Great American Dream is to be supplanted by altogether different dreams - the epic dreams of Emperor Qin. And it is at exactly this point that we see where Tan fits into the context of contemporary opera. Where East meets West is currently where you will find Tan Dun, dancing on the rumbling fault-line between the tectonic plates of two massive operatic traditions.
In the libretto to Tan Dun’s 1995 opera Marco Polo, Water sings: “unfold your story/like a carpet/teach us the patterns/the threads.” Water is a character in the opera, a representation of nature, and a powerful symbol within Taoist philosophy.Like the Tao (The Way, or The Path), water is humble and occupies the lowest places. Water nurtures all life, but it does not seek to control. It yields to everyobstacle it meets, yet because it is patient and acts in accordance with its own inner nature there is nothing it cannot overcome. In the cycle of its travels from rain toriver to ocean and eventual evaporation, water’s journey has no beginning and no end. Water as a metaphor for a journey becomes the perfect image for the operaMarco Polo, which itself encompasses three journeys: physical, spiritual and musical.
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water - of the five elements of traditional Chinese philosophy, water has become the favoured symbol in Tan’s music: Marco Polo, theWater Passion after St Matthew, the Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra, and presently Tea: a Mirror of Soul. It is these elemental resonances, the strong influence of Eastern cultures and the dialogues between the very ancient andthe very modern, which most strongly distinguish the work of Tan Dun from that of his American contemporaries on the operatic stage.
Tan is known to dislike being described as an East-West fusion composer – and thisis unsurprising given the very personal musical language he has developed over time. ‘East-West fusion’ seems to imply a brand of synthetic compromise in music,risking exploitation rather than illumination. But Tan’s musical inspiration, with its roots in spirituality and Chinese philosophy is about dialogue and connections,geographical and human. It is an inspiration that has won him a string of international awards and a strong fan-base.
Late last year Tan won the music prize offered by the city of Duisburg in Germany forhis outstanding contribution through music to intercultural relations between East and West. Duisburg is a city that knows through bitter experience the value ofgeographical connection and re-connection. The final resting-place of the geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, Duisburg was all but wiped off themap by Allied bombing raids in World War II. But the connections, both personal and geographical, endured, and a city with a thousand-year history was rebuilt. Inaccepting the award from this city, Tan gave a speech that stands as a pretty good summation of his own location on the musical map of today. The award, he said,“symbolizes the dialogue between Fire and Water, East and West, Past and Future. I am deeply encouraged by the past and will continue to forge ahead into the future,exploring and expanding the scope of my music.”
--Roger M. Smith, New Zealand International Arts Festival, 2006
作者：nunia 在 寒山小径 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
|
|
Met's new Hero: Tan Dun
