You must have read or heard of the sad love story between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. But can you imagine the two singing opera in English instead of speaking poetic (诗意的) Chinese?
Jia and Lin are two characters from the classic Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (《红楼梦》), written by Cao Xueqin(1715- 1763). Some artists made the book into an English-language opera. They first put the opera on the stage in September, 2016 in San Francisco, US. And the next year it came to Beijing, Changsha and Wuhan.
Many of the opera's creators have backgrounds ( 背 景 ) in both Chinese and American cultures. Their understanding of both cultures helped them to change a Chinese classic into a foreign-language opera.
The book, which covers the rise and fall of the Jia family, has 120 chapters and hundreds of characters. But opera writer David Henry Hwang cut down the number of characters to just seven. Hwang, a Chinese-American, focused on the love story between Jia and Lin and tried to write a heartbroken tragedy ( 悲剧) so that everyone would understand it.
The art director Timmy Yip, from Hong Kong, tried to help foreigners understand the characters by using costumes and stage settings (布景). He compared Lin to water and gave her a light green costume. When Lin shows up on stage, there is usually water around her on the stage.
The creators consider it to be a meaningful job to introduce a Chinese classic to western audience ( 观众 ). Hwang told China Daily, "I am happy to have made a contribution to the land where my parents were born."
