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27/06/08 A Night at the Chinese Opera - Edinburgh |
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By Judith Weir Sung in English
Director - Lee Blakeley
Designer - Jean-Marc Puissant
Lighting - Jenny Cane
Conductor Siân Edwards
Cast
A Military Governor - Reno Troilus
A Mongolian Soldier - Nicholas Warden
Chao Sun - Toby Stafford-Allen
Little Moon - Jane Harrington
Chao Lin (as adult) - Damian Thantrey
Mrs Chin/Old Crone - Fiona Kimm
Old P'end/Old Mountain Dweller - Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks
An Actor - Sarah Redgwick
An Actor - Stephen Chaundry
Fourteenth century China: a group of workers gather and act out a play, The Chao Family Orphan. The action of the play seems to parallel the life of the opera's protagonist, a civil engineer named Chao Lin, who misinterprets it and tries to use it to predict his own destiny. But Fate has a different end in store for Chao, and is not to be outwitted.
Scottish composer Judith Weir is one of the most original and provocative voices to have emerged in British opera in recent years. This new production of A Night at the Chinese Opera is directed by Lee Blakeley, well known to Scottish Opera audiences for his recent sell-out, touring production of Die Fledermaus, and is the first time Weir's exuberant opera has been staged in Scotland. Involving a colourful range of characters, including canal workers, explorers, Emperors and even Marco Polo, A Night at the Chinese Opera is a tale within a tale with its tongue firmly in its cheek.
In turns comic, melodramatic, farcical and tragic, A Night at the Chinese Opera combines catchy folk melodies with parodies of Chinese and Italian opera to provide an original, distinctive and thoroughly enjoyable night out.
'On no account to be missed wherever it turns up' Financial Times
'A little miracle of music-theatre ingenuity' The Times
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