FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE

Since its birth in 1995, Guo Guang has always combined traditional opera with modern theatrical concepts, in order to cultivate young audiences while satisfying older connoisseurs. The company experiments new techniques including modern stage design, light and multimedia effects. The company stages new operas, mixing old and modern literature. ‘The Fox tale’, a love story between an immortal fox and a young woman, based on an ancient plot, includes some elements inspired by Japanese modern drawings and is a total rewriting of the ancient story. These new creations have won numerous awards for their artistic achievement. Besides creating operas, Guo Guang makes educational tours to remote corners of the island, putting on shows in country schools and assorted temples, using makeshift stages, and visits old folks’ homes as well as children’s festivals where the troupe members teach “Chinese opera exercises” and “Opera dances” to cultivate interest among the uninitiated ones. They have a performing arts stage in South East Taipei where they present every month traditional operas for less than 15euro.

Following their original aim, Guo Guang proposes to European audience a rewriting of ‘Farewell my concubine, in search of a lost afternoon’. The Opera has become famous with the awarded movie Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige – 1993. The movie explores the effect of Mao’s political turmoil during the middle 20th century on the lives of individuals, families, and groups, focusing on two male stars in a Beijing Opera troupe – following the old tradition of beijing opera, the youngest one used to play the concubine of the oldest in the Opera- and the woman who comes between them. In 1994, the Contemporary Legend Theatre from Taiwan performed ‘Farewell my concubine’, the Opera, in France.  Around eigtheen years after the movie, the Opera comes in Europe again, in a very new version performed by the Guo Guang company. In this version, the costume design is a recreation of the traditional Beijing opera style costume: some part of the makeup and the color of the costumes refer to Beijing opera but the cut and some materials are more modern.

The original Opera tells the story of Lord Xiang Yu, a hero from the Qin Dynasty, whose fight at Gai Xia against a villain, Liu Bang, leads his concubine, Yu Ji, to commit suicide in order to relieve his concern for her, as proof of her love for him. The Guo Guang rewriting focuses more on the wander of Yu Ji after her suicide, when she meets in the underworld Xian Yu’s battle companion, Wu Zhui who sacrificed himself to his lord. They wonder if their lord succeed or not in the battle, or killed himself with his sword. In another place, Xian Yu who cut his throat after the defeat is looking for his head and meets Fan Zeng who advised him to defeat his enemy by underhanded means, what he did not do, and died of sorrow. Does Xian Yu have to regret his choice? Will he meet his lover again? The rewriting of the story is very close to Greek tragedy in which the hero is questioning himself. The questioning leads to the emergence of the invidual choice, like Antigun who chooses to bury her brothers following the tradition against the established rules. The question of the responsibility in one’s life is raised here with acuity.

No doubt the artists on stage and the opera singers will offer the audience an extremely achieved performance with lyrical moments, martial arts and acrobatics in the very Beijing opera style. DVDM