Music: Chinese Opera: Gongs & Whiteface

• Share

(2 of 2)

The program's immense visual appeal lies in costumes that can hardly be matched anywhere else. By and large, they are replicas of what was worn by emperors and ordinary folk during the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). Silk is the predominant fabric; even beggars wear it, but with patches. Monarchs always wear yellow gowns embroidered with dragons; women of the higher classes, long skirts concealing their feet. Anyone without a headdress is presumed to be in great danger—and, in fact, may already have been beaten up.

Magic Power. Peking opera is at times a dizzying mix of dance, music, mime, processionals, tapestried tableaux and hilarious acrobatics. Banners are everywhere, signifying anything from magic power to the number of troops in a general's army. Nothing sums up these diverse elements better than the Taiwan company's version of The Monkey King, which tells the story of a cleric's disciple who drinks too much, fights too much, but does a lot of good and in the end becomes a Buddhist. Perhaps China's most popular legendary hero, the Monkey King is a sort of 16th century superman who carries a seven-ton club and can cover 36,000 miles in a single tumble. Actor Chang Fu-ch'un, 28, brings off the title role with a series of preposterously effective battles against wind, fire, rockfalls and water spirits.

So skilled, indeed, are the performances that it may come as a shock for American audiences to learn that the National Chinese Opera Theater did not exist six months ago. Peking opera has had its hard core of followers on Taiwan, but nothing to match the popular appeal of the Ko Tsai Hsi, the Chinese folk opera company that regularly performs at festivals and on Taiwan TV.

The company was assembled from recent descendants of pre-Mao mainland opera stars and graduates of the island's five Peking-opera schools. By Nationalist government command, leading performers from several theater and opera troupes were also recruited for the tour. This may pose a problem for those companies, because pressure is already building to make the National Chinese Opera Theater a permanent institution.

It deserves to be that.