歌劇《驚園》 哈哈鏡中看崑曲
An Opera That Springs From China but Laps Distant Shores
歌劇《驚園》，哈哈鏡中看崑曲
Even the loveliest and most meaningful tribute may exact a significant toll, as the Chinese opera diva Qian Yi can attest.
中國的崑曲名伶錢熠可以證明，哪怕最可愛、最有意義的頌詞，可能也需要付出相當大的代價。
Ms. Qian (pronounced Chen), now 41, rose quickly to superstardom — albeit in a field few Westerners know — through her portrayal of the heroine in a landmark 19-hour production of the classic opera “The Peony Pavilion” that was a centerpiece of the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999 and then toured the world. Ms. Qian, who has since become something of a regular at the festival with starring roles in “The Orphan of Zhao” (2003) and “My Life as a Fairy Tale” (2005), returns this week as the generically titled protagonist, the Woman, in “Paradise Interrupted,” a one-act opera created for her by the director and visual designer Jennifer Wen Ma and the composer Huang Ruo.
41歲的錢熠憑藉在具有里程碑意義、長達19小時的經典劇目《牡丹亭》中飾演女主角，而迅速成爲超級巨星——儘管是在一個西方人極少了解的領域。該劇是1999年林肯中心藝術節(Lincoln Center Festival)的重頭戲，之後在全球巡演。後來，錢熠成爲該藝術節的常客，又主演了《趙氏孤兒》(2003)和《童話般的人生》(My Life as a Fairy Tale，2005)。本週，她攜《驚園》(Paradise Interrupted)迴歸，飾演劇中僅以“女人”爲名的女主角。該劇是導演、視覺設計師馬文和作曲家黃若爲她創作的獨幕歌劇。
But for this work, which had its premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., last year, Ms. Qian has had to rethink her training from the ground up. And steeped as she has been since her Shanghai childhood in the ultrarefined opera tradition known as kunqu (which prizes “The Peony Pavilion,” a 1598 epic by Tang Xianzu, as its pinnacle), she had to learn new methods of both singing and acting.
該劇去年在南卡羅來納州查爾斯頓的斯波萊託美國藝術節(Spoleto Festival USA)上首演。爲了這部戲，錢熠不得不徹底重新思考受過的訓練。儘管她從小在上海就浸淫於極其優美的戲曲傳統——崑曲之中（崑曲的巔峯之作就是1598年湯顯祖創作的鉅作《牡丹亭》），但這次她不得不學習新的演唱和表演方法。
“The challenge is to find my own voice,” Ms. Qian said after a rehearsal last week. And that is perhaps as it should be, for this tale of a woman’s vain quest to regain a remembered or imagined ideal state, leading to growth in a new direction, is partly her own. (By way of disclosure, through many interviews and encounters, beginning in 1998 in Shanghai, I have developed a personal friendship with Ms. Qian, who now lives in New York.)
“難點在於找到自己的聲音，”上週錢熠在一次彩排後說。也許就應該是這樣，因爲這個關於一個女人徒勞追求重返記憶中或想像中完美狀態（從而導致向新的方向發展）的故事，在一定程度上也是她自己的故事（順便透露一下，從1998年在上海起，我就對她進行過多次採訪，打過很多交道，所以我們之間已經建立起私人友誼；她現居紐約）。
Ms. Qian had already taken a difficult step away from tradition in “The Peony Pavilion,” where the American-based Chen Shi-Zheng’s bold direction called for a degree of naturalism foreign to kunqu (pronounced kwin-CHU), which embraces not only song but also elaborate, flowing stylized dance.
錢熠在《牡丹亭》中已經開始背離傳統。該劇導演陳士爭活躍於美國藝術界，風格大膽，主張一定程度的自然主義（這對崑曲來說是陌生的概念），將歌唱與複雜、流暢的舞蹈融合到一起。
(That naturalism was undoubtedly one reason the production was detained in 1998 by oversolicitous Shanghai municipal authorities and postponed a year.) But Ms. Ma and Gwen Welliver, the “Paradise” choreographer, take Ms. Qian in another direction, introducing a certain angularity to her movements.
（那種自然主義無疑是該劇1998年遭到過於小心的上海市當局擱置的原因，因此延遲一年上演）不過，馬文和《驚園》的舞蹈指導格溫·韋利弗(Gwen Welliver)把錢熠帶向另一個方向，在她的動作中加入某種棱角。
And Mr. Huang’s music carries her into terrain even less familiar. The pentatonic scale and subtle, lilting phrasings of kunqu give way to a world of pitch and melody in which almost anything goes.
黃若的音樂把她帶到一個更爲陌生的領域。崑曲的五聲音階以及精妙細膩、抑揚頓挫的樂句，讓位於一個幾乎什麼都有可能的音高和旋律構成的世界。
Even the seemingly simple matter of responding to the gestures of a conductor — though she also encountered it while performing in Stewart Wallace’s “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” at the San Francisco Opera in 2008 — poses problems. In kunqu, Ms. Qian takes cues from the sounds of a drum and essentially goes her own musical way at her own pace.
甚至連看似簡單的跟隨樂隊指揮的手勢都成了一個問題，雖然2008年她在舊金山歌劇院(San Francisco Opera)表演斯圖爾特·華萊士(Stewart Wallace)的《接骨師的女兒》(The Bonesetter’s Daughter)時就碰到過這個麻煩。在崑曲中，錢熠是踩着鼓點，基本上按照自己的節奏進行音樂表演。
“Here you have to look for the conductor as you go through your movements,” Ms. Qian said. “But in Chinese opera, you cannot look away. It’s painful. It’s weird.”
“在這裏，你表演時必須尋找指揮，”錢熠說，“但是在中國戲劇中，你不能往別處看。那很痛苦，也很奇怪。”
The makers call “Paradise Interrupted” an installation opera. The idea originated with Ms. Ma, 43, a visual designer best known for her work on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
製作方稱，《驚園》是一部裝置歌劇。這個想法最初來自43歲的馬文，這位視覺設計師以其在2008年北京奧運會開幕式和閉幕式上的作品最爲人知。
In 2012, she installed a work, “Hanging Garden in Ink,” with plants painted black, based on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. And she began thinking more broadly about gardens: the one where Du Liniang of “The Peony Pavilion” dreams of love, and the Garden of Eden.
2012年，她在北京的尤倫斯當代藝術中心做了一個裝置作品，名叫《空中墨花園》(Hanging Garden in Ink)。她以巴比倫的空中花園爲靈感，把植物塗成黑色。之後，她開始從更寬泛的角度思考花園：《牡丹亭》中杜麗娘夢想愛情的那個花園以及伊甸園(Garden of Eden)。
Introduced to Ms. Qian’s artistry by Lihe Xiao, a lighting designer now part of the “Paradise” creative team, Ms. Ma conceived a work set in a black garden made of huge, collapsible paper cutouts and she enlisted a young playwright, Ji Chao, to help develop a libretto reflecting Ms. Qian’s background in kunqu opera. (For touring, the paper is replaced by a sturdier material.) Ms. Qian, in turn, introduced Ms. Ma to Mr. Huang and his music.
馬文通過燈光設計師蕭麗河瞭解到錢熠的藝術成就，構想出一部用可摺疊的巨大剪紙做成的黑色花園爲背景的作品。蕭麗河現在是《驚園》創作團隊的一員。馬文還找到年輕劇作家晁寂（音譯）幫忙寫一個能反映錢熠崑曲背景的歌劇劇本（爲了方便巡迴演出，剪紙被一種更結實的材料所取代）。而錢熠則把黃若和他的音樂介紹給了馬文。
“The idea of a garden came first, before a note was written, before a word was written,” Ms. Ma said last week. “The music informs the visual, but the visual led the text and the music.”
“最先出現的想法是花園——在一個音符、一句歌詞尚未寫出之前，”馬文上週在接受採訪時說道。“音樂反映視覺，不過視覺引領唱詞和音樂。”
Not that the score is subservient or retiring. Mr. Huang, 39, composer in residence for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, projects a strong and versatile voice, reflecting both his Chinese origins and a vast range of experiences in the West.
這並不是說樂曲是附屬或次要的。39歲的黃若是阿姆斯特丹皇家大會堂管絃樂隊(Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra)和臺灣交響樂團的常駐作曲家。他呈現出強烈而多樣的聲音，反映出他的中國淵源以及在西方的廣泛經歷。
“I use the word integration instead of fusion or collage,” Mr. Huang said. “When I compose, I don’t think about what sounds Eastern or what sounds Western, or how to put the two together. I simply write or sing in my own voice. In ‘Paradise Interrupted,’ although it has inspiration from the Chinese traditional kunqu opera, all the music, vocal and instrumental, is newly written.”
“我喜歡用‘集成’這個詞，而不是‘融合’或‘拼貼’，”黃若說，“作曲時，我不會考慮哪些聽起來像東方，哪些像西方，也不考慮如何將兩者放在一起。我只是寫出或唱出我自己的聲音。《驚園》雖然受到中國傳統崑曲的啓發，但是所有的音樂——聲樂和器樂都是新創作的。”
The text, sung mostly in Mandarin (translated in titles), is new, too. Some of it uses words invented by Mr. Huang: a “celestial language,” he calls it, for the male singers playing elements — Wind, Air, Earth, Light, Fire — and other parts. One of those men is the remarkable countertenor John Holiday, who has a range more soprano than alto and often soars above Ms. Qian.
歌詞也是全新的，主要是用中文唱出（通過字幕翻譯）。有些用的是黃若發明的語言：他稱之爲“天上的語言”，它們是爲飾演風、空氣、地、光和火等元素以及其他一些角色的男歌手設計的。其中一位是著名的假聲男高音約翰·霍利迪(John Holiday)，他的音域比普通男聲最高音歌手還高，而且經常高過錢熠。
This, too, she finds unsettling, as any diva no doubt would. “In Chinese opera,” she said, “no one ever competes with the star.”
這也令她感到不安——任何一位優伶遇到這種情況都會感到不安。“在中國戲劇中，”她說，“沒人與主角競爭。”
Still, this is a star vehicle if ever there was one, and Ms. Qian is grateful.
不過，這是一部造星作品，錢熠對此十分感激。
“These people have been holding my hand,” she said of Ms. Ma and Mr. Huang, “leading me forward. They’ve given me a distorting mirror to look back at my own tradition, to see what I can learn, what I can provide.”
“這些人抓着我的手，”她提到馬文和黃若時說，“帶領我前進。他們給了我一面哈哈鏡，讓我回望自己的傳統，去看看自己能學到什麼，呈現什麼。”
