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ROIO of the Week [Recordings
of Indeterminate Origin]
Click on the panels to download artwork
Liu
Sola
Fantasy Of The Red Queen [no label, 1CD]
Opera in six scenes with prologue and epilogue
Live
at Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt am Main, May 5, 2006.
Liu
Sola
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Chinese musician
Liu Sola might be classically trained but she is a blues fan and spent
time touring the Mississippi Delta and studying the blues. She has also
performed with Bill Laswell (and Praxis) and John Zorn (and Painkiller)
so she is no stranger to avant-rock/jazz. In 2006, she was commissioned
to produce an opera featuring recent Chinese history. The result is The
Fantasy Of The Red Queen, performed in May 2006 in Frankfurt and Berlin,
Germany.
The opera is about a woman who think she is Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s
fourth wife and one of the prime movers of the repressive Chinese Cultural
Revolution. Just like Jiang Qing who replaced the existing Chinese cultural
life (deemed decadent at that time) with one that is stultifyingly her
own, Liu has returned to haunt Jiang Qing with a vengeance.
The show begins deceptively enough, with a gu qin lead-in (sounding
like a Ry Cooder slide guitar part). But then the music is a page out
of John Zorn's notebooks - a collage of Chinese musical motifs and sounds
put through a grindmill. It's as if the whole history of Chinese music
is condensed into short bites refracted this way and that. While John
Zorn can take a perfectly simple Morricone tune and warp it all up, Liu
does the same to Chinese pop tunes, evergreens, huang mei tiao
and (Chinese) opera.
If there is a quibble (and it is a small one at that), it is that Liu
did not make the sound even more extreme. Torn between opting for a condensed
visceral impact and a clearer narrative flow, Liu has opted for the latter.
The result is almost like the difference between watching Takashi Miike's
Audition (whose bouts of violence is interlaced with periods of lyricism)
and Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man (with its full-on brutality).
Overall, the music cannot fail to captivate.
But again, this musical is a reflection of Jiang Qing's mind rather than
from the point of view of her victims. As those who lived through the
Cultural Revolution, even full-on brutality might not be brutal enough!
[Just in case anyone thinks that the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a
figment of somebody's imagination, Chen Jo-hsi's collection of short stories,
The Execution Of Mayor Yin, cannot be recommended enough.]
Thanks to tradelivebootlegs who shared the FM broadcast of the Frankfurt
show on the internet. As the show was performed in Mandarin, it was broadcast
with German announcements between the songs and these have been omitted
to give the show a smoother flow. Unfortunately, there is an audible FM
hiss, which is pronounced when played loud. For those who do not know
Mandarin or want some background to the show, it is suggested they refer
to the notes provided by tradelivebootlegs below.
Click on the highlighted
tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality, stereo MP3s - sample
rate of 192 kibit/s). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never
been officially released.
These tracks are no longer available for download. Kindly email us at
mybigo@bigozine.com if you want
to download these tracks at a later time.
| |
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| Track
01 |
Prologue
Nurse Telephone
(4.5MB) |
| Track
02 |
Scene
1 Memories Of The Red Queen
(15.7MB) |
| Track
03 |
Scene
2 Illusions Of The Red Queen
(17.3MB) |
| Track
04 |
Scene
3 Reality Of The Red Queen
(12.9MB) |
| Track
05 |
Scene
4 Disillusion And Revenge Of The Red Queen
(19.7MB) |
| Track
06 |
Scene
5 Revolution
(8.7MB) |
| Track
07 |
Scene
6 Hospital
(10.5MB) |
| Track
08 |
Epilogue
Nurse Telephone
(10.4MB) |
Musicians:
Liu Sola - Pop Mezzo Soprano (Jiang Qing)
Wu Jing - Vocal (Nurse)
Zhen Jianhua - Beijing Opera Baritone (Devil)
Liang Heping - Piano
Zhang Hangsheng, Li Zhengui, Zhang Lie - Chinese Percussion
Yang Jing - Pipa
Wu Na - Gu Qin
Ensemble Modern, leader: Johannes Kalitzke
+ + + + +
Notes provided by
tradelivebootlegs:
1. General Announcement
6:09
2. Prologue
Nurse Telephone 3:19
3. Scene 1
Memories Of The Red Queen 11:28
4. Announcement
0:47
5. Scene 2
Illusions Of The Red Queen 12:38
6. Scene 3
Reality Of The Red Queen 9:25
7. Announcement
0:48
8. Scene 4
Disillusion And Revenge Of The Red Queen 14:23
9. Scene 5
Revolution 6:22
10. Announcement
0:53
11. Scene 6
Hospital 7:42
12. Epilogue
Nurse Telephone 7:35
13. Announcement
0:39
Total: 1:22:59
Source & lineage:
hr2 > soundcard
> WaveLab > CDR
This
is an inferior analog recording from FM into PC. It has - unfortunately
- audible FM hiss. I would be very pleased to get a digitally sourced
upgrade.
Friends of music
released on Axiom and Tzadik labels will be familiar with Liu Sola's works
with Bill Laswell and John Zorn, most notably "Blues In The East". Liu
Sola had also live guest appearances with Praxis (2000) and Painkiller
(2005). Frank Zappa fans might remember the Ensemble Modern from "Yellow
Shark".
Though this opera
may have little in common with Praxis and Painkiller, it's an interesting
effort. The radio program was moderated with announcements in German language.
For people whose Chinese and German is not so fluent, it's useful at least
to read the description here and given websites. The House of World Cultures
(HKW) Festival organizers had assigned Liu Sola to curate the In Transit
Festival 2004 and 2005. It brought some interesting events, such as Sussan
Deihim's "Madman of God" and Liu Sola's own in 2005. Unfortunately to
date none of these have surfaced in the shape of a recording. The HKW
then commissioned to Liu Sola the composition of an opera to feature recent
Chinese history. The result of this work, Liu Sola's opera "The Fantasy
Of The Red Queen", was eventually performed in May 2006 in Frankfurt and
in Berlin, and the Frankfurt recording is presented here.
The MC announcements
are split into separate tracks. For repeat listens and especially for
listeners for whom German language is no help, it may make sense to burn
the CDR without the announcements…
tradelivebootlegs@yahoo.com
http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?575
http://www.hkw.de/en/programm2006/cultural_memory/texte_2/The_Red_Queen.php
http://www.ensemblemodern.com
The Opera
In cooperation with
the Ensemble Modern, the House of World Cultures is premièring
the commissioned opera Fantasy of the Red Queen by Liu Sola. This opera,
however, does not tell the story of the "Red Queen" herself
- that is, of Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s fourth wife - but of a woman
whose dream of power makes her identify so closely with Jiang Qing that
she believes that she really is Jiang Qing.
Jiang Qing was the
chief instigator and driving force behind the Cultural Revolution. After
a lack-lustre career as an actress in Peking Opera and cinema in 1920s
Shanghai, she joined the communists at Ya'nan, where she met and later
married Mao. For many years, she was forced to live in his shadow. However,
in the mid sixties, in the face of increasing political opposition, Mao
enlisted his wife's help in unleashing the Cultural Revolution. Sensing
her time had come, she soon became its leading figure. She used the Cultural
Revolution to rid herself of personal enemies and rivals, to settle old
scores and to impose her notion of ‘revolutionary art’ upon
others.
Arrests, torture and political murders - mainly of intellectuals and people
working in the cultural sphere - were carried out at her command. Countless
publications were destroyed and museums and theatres stormed and looted.
Red Guards formed all over China, first at the Universities and shortly
afterwards at the schools and factories too. The Red Guards obeyed her
orders, causing chaos and destruction across the country. She personally
commissioned and directed the eight so-called ‘model operas’
- the only operas allowed to be performed during the Cultural Revolution.
After Mao's death, she was arrested by her adversaries and deprived of
all her rights, even the right to call herself Mao's widow. She was held
in prison for about twenty years before committing suicide - a very ill
woman - at the age of eighty.
In Liu Sola's opera,
the protagonist is not Jiang Qing but an old woman in a hospital, deranged
by her dreams of power. Thus at one level, the opera is a political phantasmagoria:
it presents politics as phantasmagoria. It shows the power of illusion
- and the illusion of power. Other levels of the story unfold through
a mixture of fact and fantasy, memory and desire. Events take place both
on stage and on a giant video screen. On stage, we recognise immediately
that guardians of the new social order (represented by the nurse, the
secretary and the chef) are no longer Red Guards but citizens of a consumer
society - a society of cell-phones, global commodities and MSG-laced cuisine.
On stage, the old lady sits staring at a blank wall which turns into a
video screen on which she sees herself during different periods of her
life: as a young woman, as a Peking Opera actress, as a beautiful mature
woman confined to the Forbidden City, and as the Red Queen dressed in
Peking Opera costume. In later scenes, other images fill the screen: a
Peking Opera dancer performing movements codified as ‘revolutionary’
and the same dancer appearing as a ghost.
In every scene, a masked zither player appears, playing an old tune with
no political overtones. This mysterious zither player is a key symbolic
figure, representing something like the stubborn structure of historical
traditions which persists in spite of ‘revolutionary’ and ‘capitalist’
transformations. The other key figure is the Devil, whose dialogues with
the Red Queen lie at the dramatic and emotional centre of the opera. He
controls and manipulates her at the same time as he seems to be helping
her to gratify her deepest desires.
The Devil understands the power of ‘tradition’, and it is from
him that the Red Queen gets the idea of combining Chinese traditional
opera and the revolution to form the revolutionary opera. Their interchange
serves to show that the desire for power is only one particular instance
of the power of desire, which we are paradoxically powerless to resist.
This dialectical relationship between power and powerlessness, especially
poignant in the case of women in patriarchal society, communist or capitalist,
can lead to the tragic end of a Jiang Qing or a Red Queen.
Cast and Credits
Composition and libretto
Liu
Sola
Musicians
Ensemble Modern,
nineteen instrumentalists;
Nine Chinese
instrumentalists of whom six play traditional Chinese instruments: three
Chinese drums; the gu qin (zither), pipa (lute); and the piano/accordion
(revolutionary style).
Three Chinese
singers: Liu Sola as the old lady with delusions about being Jiang Qing;
a pop singer as a nurse; a Peking Opera singer as the Devil.
All
the instrumentalists have speaking parts as the chorus.
Duration
1 1/2 hours with
no interval. The opera consists of a prelude, six scenes and an epilogue,
with no change of set.
The Music
The music takes motifs
from revolutionary songs, traditional music, Shanghai pop, nineteen thirties
jazz, so-called revolutionary tango, traditional Chinese opera, Chinese
hip-hop, as well as romantic, modern and contemporary classical music.
It draws on the very diverse forms of music created during the last 150
years or so all over the world to explore the relationship between the
music and the social imaginary. Liu Sola's own score is generated through
a process of composition and decomposition: it eschews musical purity.
In music devoted to the Red Queen we hear the beginnings of musical lines
that are broken off, interrupted, diverted. Nevertheless, a kind of extreme
passion permeates the whole.
The Setting
The musicians from
the Ensemble Modern wear black suits and grey arm bands. They form a semi-circle
in the background and play the parts of security guards. They also move
about: running, dancing and singing. Chinese musicians in the foreground
wear grey overalls and play the hospital staff. Liu Sola is the Red Queen:
a bewildered old lady. A well known Beijing pop singer takes the role
of the nurse who would much rather be a pop star. A well known star from
the traditional Peking Opera performs the role of the Devil, who repeatedly
helps the Red Queen to establish contact with the past.
The set is uncompromisingly
stark and plain; it consists of a large bed with a video screen behind
it. The hospital bed fully occupies the centre of the stage. It is here
that the Red Queen acts throughout the performance.
A DVD projection
on a black-and-white screen provides encrypted flashbacks to the time
of the Cultural Revolution as well as to the preceding period: surging
crowds, the decorated uniform jacket of a top functionary, a dancing Shanghai
Opera beauty from the 1920s... The entire set, including the costumes,
is black-and-white. The only fields of colour are the costumes of the
Red Queen from her glorious period; some of them hang here and there;
and some are worn by her during the course of the opera.
For more... email mybigo@bigozine.com
with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."
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April
21, 2007
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