Chinese Chuanqi opera in English: Directing The West Wing with modern music

Abstract

Part of a lab theatre experiment, this chuanqi opera production was an attempt to revive audience experience of the golden age of Chinese xiqu through text parallelism and music parallelism. Text parallelism requires the matching translation of the lingual features of a chuanqi text into its English double; such features include colloquial lexis, dense rhyming, language parallelism, and a measure of compensation in the adoptive language for the lost tonal patterns of the original. Music parallelism mimics the Ming China practice of employing music contemporary to the audience and composing the libretto to existing popular melodies. © 2012 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.