Mixing it up to add pizzazz

PoloArts Entertainment Company CEO Wang Xiang will never forget stumbling upon a pile of Kunqu Opera tapes in the office of producer, theater administrator and international music distributor Neil Mundy about 10 years ago in London.

He offered Wang the master copy of the Chinese director's production - 20 hours of 55 acts, commissioned and premiered by the Lincoln Center in July 1999 and recorded over six days at the Festival d'Automne in Paris. The production also toured Paris, Milan, Sydney and Hong Kong.

Wang clearly recalls Mundy's excitement. It was rare for a foreign producer to take interest in a Chinese opera before Kunqu Opera was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.

Wang was dazzled when he saw Chen Shizheng's production. He was amazed at the bold creativity and artistic intransigence in approaching an old Chinese art genre. Chen's training at home and in the US shone through in the work.

Chen is comparable to Tan Dun - both were born in Hunan's provincial capital Changsha, spent their teenage years immersed in local folk music and operas, and are known for mixing Eastern and Western culture in their musical productions.

Chen spent five years studying Huaguxi Opera from age 14 and was once the local company's lead actor.

But when the young and ambitious actor realized the old opera was deteriorating and the performances onstage had nothing to do with real life in the 1980s, he decided to study singing at the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

He learned a lot about modern Western art during his time in the capital. This finally took him to New York University's Tisch School of Art in 1987.

Chen laughs at himself when he recalls all of the odd jobs he took in New York to make ends meet. He worked on musicals, operas and modern dance shows, and sang and did choreography.

A Greek company commissioned him to direct the China National Peking Opera Company's performance of the Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae in 1997.

Chen allowed the Peking Opera actors to speak Chinese in the genre's style but sing in Greek to an American composer's score.

The production won acclaim and toured the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Athens Festival.

Chen's breakthrough came in 1998.

He got the chance to act on his aspiration to breathe new life into the dying Kunqu Opera genre when the Lincoln Center commissioned him to perform The Peony Pavilion.

The show was a co-production with Shanghai Kunqu Opera Co. But it was too avant-garde for the Shanghai Culture Bureau's officials then and did not run in New York until July 1999, when Chen brought in new performers.

The 20-hour, 55-act, four-night Kunqu Opera became a sensation. It helped the genre enter the world's highbrow mainstream culture.

Chen's interpretation of this classical play recreates the original spirit of the opera, which was lost through the years, using innovative staging techniques.

This was the start of his crossover career, in which he explores his own artistic expressions that transcend the East/West divide and erases boundaries among music, theater, dance and film.

In 2007, he directed the film Dark Matters, featuring Meryl Streep. Based on a true story, the movie tells the story of a young Chinese scientist, who must confront the dark forces of politics, ego and cultural insensitivity.

His new opera, Miss Fortune, is now running at the Royal Opera in London through March 28. In April, his production of John Adams' opera Nixon in China will run at Paris' Chatelet Theatre.

Although most of Chen's works are based on Chinese stories and feature Chinese elements, the new Peking Opera Farewell My Concubine is the first that "is really produced in China".

But it won't be the last. He has visited a theater in Jilin province's capital Changchun, where he's considering creating an acrobatic and animation show.

Farewell My Concubine will run in London to celebrate the 2012 Olympic Games this summer.