Three entry points to appreciate the opera Dream of the Red Chamber
Lecture for San Francisco Opera’s 2022 Dream of the Red Chamber production, with audio video excerpts and details about the music by Bright Sheng
My name is Byron Au Yong. I am a composer and associate professor of music at the University of San Francisco. In this 20-minute overview, I focus on three frameworks to appreciate Dream of the Red Chamber. I will also speak about how composer Bright Sheng approached writing the music. You will learn more about the source material, as well as hear audio excerpts from this contemporary opera.
Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) is an epic novel with over 400 characters. The initial 80 chapters were written by Cao Xue Qin (曹雪芹) over a 20-year period, until his death in the mid-1760s. While Cao was from a noble family that had served Manchu royalty since the early 1600s, his family’s fortunes and property were confiscated by the Yongzheng Emperor (雍正帝).
Even though Cao wrote Dream of the Red Chamber in poverty towards the end of his life, his novel showcases the aristocratic lifestyle from his youth in 18th-century China. These include the opulent textiles, enchanting gardens, and grand palaces you’ll see referenced in the production design by Tim Yip. These luxuries are in contrast to the “thatched roof… string bed… [and] crockery,”¹ where the author prepared the little food he had, as he worked on the novel.
Cao writes, “I found myself one day, in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth… There and then I resolved to make a record of all the recollections of those days I could muster — those golden days when I dressed in silk and ate delicately, when we still nestled in the protecting shadow of the Ancestors and Heaven still smiled on us.”² Dream of the Red Chamber focuses on the women who surrounded a young man, reminiscent of the author.
For this opera, the creative team has pared the 120-chapter novel down to a Prologue and 11 scenes.³ There are seven opera singers, an actor who plays a monk, plus a chorus that comments on the drama. The soloists include one male protagonist Bao Yu (宝玉), plus six women. Bao Yu is young, sensitive, and idealistic. Two of the women, Dai Yu (黛玉) and Bao Chai (宝钗), form a love triangle with Bao Yu. Dai Yu is his true love, while Bao Chai is his betrothed. Bao Chai’s social climbing mother Aunt Xue (薛姨妈) and Bao Yu’s mother Lady Wang (王夫人) show how family circumstances can lead to fortune or tragedy. Bao Yu’s perceptive sister Princess Jia (贾) and the matriarch Granny Jia (贾母) share additional information about court ambitions during the Qing Dynasty.
Rather than tell you the plot, which includes love, deception, friendship, and death, I provide three frameworks to enter this opera without spoiling the story. The first framework to appreciate Dream of the Red Chamber is to acknowledge how contradictions reveal truths. For example, tragedy exists amidst luxury. Contentment exists within deprivation. Most importantly, is the buddhist notion of love as both delusion and illumination. In an article about this opera in The New York Times, director Stan Lai notes, “Impermanence and the fleeting quality of life — these are things that are very Buddhist and quintessentially Chinese.”⁴
The “fleeting quality of life” abounds in this opera from the opening line, “welcome to my dream,” to the introduction of the love between a flower and a stone. This flower and stone travel through a magic mirror to earth, where the flower becomes Dai Yu and the stone becomes Bao Yu.
On earth, they are teenagers. Dai Yu, a marvelous musician and poet, is frail like a flower petal. Bao Yu, the sole male heir of the Jia clan, is steadfast like a stone. The greatness of their youth is a naive determination to love each other. Dai Yu and Bao Yu are cosmic soulmates, yet here in the Act One, Scene Two garden, they share human aspirations.
Bao Yu says he wants to “live a life in search of beauty, poetry, and love.”
Dai Yu answers, “I’ve sought the same. But too often, come up empty handed.”
To which Bao Yu responds, “The quest is hard but therefore more noble, for this world is full of harshness.”
To counter the harshness of life, the young lovers embrace music and poetry. As you listen to this audio excerpt note how the melody in both the accompaniment and vocal lines include melodic upward leaps of an interval of a 5th. Bao Yu sings: “I found this flower, this flower planted by the wall; a lovely blossom whose leaves are wilting.”⁵
Within the excitement of finding a lovely blossom is the realization that leaves wilt. Along with impermanence, are social restrictions during the Qing Dynasty. Bao Yu’s older sister has been promoted by the emperor to become Princess Jia. While the family rejoices, she warns them that “the Palace is filled with schemes, treacheries, and traps.”
She continues in a more introspective moment with “no one understands the weight I carry.” In this audio excerpt from Act One, Scene Five, Princess Jia repeats: “I fear” three times. While the melodic contour is similar, the lyrics fall on different pitches as if the music is scared to repeat itself. The following lyric, “I cannot,” is also repeated three times. In this setting, the melodies, pitches, dynamics, and rhythmics vary each time. Listen to how the music becomes increasingly unstable as she sings, “I cannot hold on.”⁶
The philosophical foundation of love’s impermanence, alongside societal constraints during the Qing Dynasty, heighten the tragedy of a third framework: the romantic triangle. This triangle is between Dai Yu and Bao Yu, the flower and stone turned human that we heard in the garden earlier, as well as a third character Bao Chai.
Bao Chai is the opposite of Dai Yu. She is the wealthy and worldly daughter of the social-climbing Aunt Xue. Their wealth could help pay a large debt to the emperor by Bao Yu’s family, so his mother, the practical Lady Wáng, needs this marriage to succeed.
Bao Chai questions her role with the repeated lyric: “a woman’s only happiness is to marry well.” We first hear this in Act One, Scene Three, then again in Act Two, Scene One. Note how the wilting melodic motif of a downward interval of a 4th happens on the word “marry.”⁷
While there are many entry points for Dream of the Red Chamber, recognizing the contradictions of love, knowing about societal limitations during the Qing Dynasty, and understanding the romantic triangle between Bao Yu, Dai Yu, and Bao Chai will help you appreciate the characters and their dilemmas. Moreover, I hope that by listening to the audio excerpts, you are intrigued by the music composed by Bright Sheng.
About Bright Sheng
Sheng was born in Shanghai in 1955. He began studying piano with his mother at age four. He also learned music from his father, an amateur Chinese opera singer who played a high-pitched opera fiddle. When the family’s piano was confiscated at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Sheng would sneak into school to practice music.⁸
In the article Hua’er Folk Songs of Qinghai, China, Sheng wrote, “In 1971, I was graduating from junior high school in Shanghai and the Cultural Revolution was five years old. The country was on the threshold of economic collapse… At the same time, millions of young people had graduated from junior high schools and were waiting to be employed. Mao’s solution was to force the young to the countryside, to the mountains and forests to be ‘re-educated’ by peasants doing physical labor. The only escape from this ‘re-education’ was through the performing arts… Thanks to my parents, my childhood piano lessons became a great advantage.”⁹
Sheng was assigned to work in a folk music and dance troupe in Qinghai (青海) Province on the Tibetan plateau between 1971 and 1978. In an interview in NewMusicBox, Sheng said, “in Tibet, the basics of life were minimal, but people would still sing folk songs… That was my first encounter of rural down-to-earth basic musical elements that reflect human emotions.”¹⁰ During this formative time, Sheng played piano and percussion, studied folk music, and also started conducting and composing music.
When Chinese universities reopened in 1978, Sheng studied composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, until he moved to New York in 1982. Curious about western classical music, Sheng remembers buying standing room tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. He said, “I struggled to understand and to follow the story. What I relied on was not language. It was mostly in the music… what made an impression was how the music made the drama.”¹¹
In the United States, Sheng continued to study composition and listen to music, notably with Leonard Bernstein. Considering how his background influences Dream of the Red Chamber, I will speak about Sheng’s musical approach, especially his relationship to harmony. I studied composition with Sheng at the University of Washington in the mid-1990s. His lessons included analyzing music from a composer’s perspective. I will never forget learning how Brahms transformed musical motifs in an Intermezzo. Similarly, Sheng arranges rhythms and pitches into motifs that he continually rearranges as the music progresses. As a result, these motifs can be heard in counterpoint with each other. Rather than write out vertical chord progressions to structure the harmony, Sheng layers vocal and instrumental motifs horizontally to develop the sonic material.
Let’s listen to one of the most heightened moments in Dream of the Red Chamber. This is towards the end of Act I, when all the soloists are singing.
Princess Jia sings, “No one understands the weight I carry…”
Bao Chai and Aunt Xue sing, “Bring honor to our family…”
Lady Wang sings, “Our burden shall be lifted…”
Granny Jia sings, “Power and riches shall not rule our lives…”
Dai Yu sings, “I see the future…”
and Bao Yu sings, “My family sees me as a pawn in their ambitions…”
Note how Sheng brings multiple musical motifs together to achieve dramatic excitement.¹²
Within the polyphony, you may have noticed Sheng’s multiple influences from Chinese folk to western classical music. In his article Bartók, the Chinese Composer, Sheng is impressed with composer Bela Bartók for “the spirit of his approach to composition and the essence of his deep understanding of both the folk and classical traditions.”¹³ Sheng’s craft as a composer extends Bartók’s research collecting songs and composing music influenced by the spirit and atmosphere of folk music. Sheng says, “a good composition should have the same capacity to express different moods that switch quickly.”¹⁴
The music for Dream of the Red Chamber embraces multidimensional techniques to convey this beloved story. Sheng and co-librettist David Henry Hwang¹⁵ adapted one of China’s most cherished novels for multiple audiences as Sheng notes, “on the one hand, European and American audiences who do not know much about Dream of the Red Chamber, and on the other hand, domestic and foreign fans.”¹⁶ While this novel may be new to American and European audiences, it has been adapted in movies, television series, and Chinese operas. Conductor Darrell Ang said that he first read the comic book version as a teenager.¹⁷ This adaptation is the first western opera setting of Dream of the Red Chamber. It premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2016, in a co-production with the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The $3 million dollar production toured China in 2017, and returns to San Francisco Opera in the production you are about to experience.¹⁸
For me, Dream of the Red Chamber is ultimately about awakening. We know that as we enter the performance, the dream will be momentary. We can relate with the characters and feel their joy and pain. If we feel their love, perhaps we are in love. If we feel they are trapped, perhaps we are trapped. Sheng said, “I am drawn to ill-fated love stories… Over the sleeve romanticism is part of me.”¹⁹
For the final audio excerpt, let’s listen to the Act One, Scene Two over-the-sleeve, romantic duet where Bao Yu and Dai Yu sing, “Like two stars in one constellation. Like two rivers bound for one ocean. Together, we will prove that beauty can transform.”
Thank you for joining me for this lecture. Enjoy Dream of the Red Chamber.
[1] Hawkes, David. The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, pp. 20–21.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sheng, Bright. Dream of the Red Chamber. New York, NY: G. Schirmer, Inc., 2016.
[4] Qin, Amy. “An American Opera Company Adapts China’s War and Peace.” The New York Times, September 9, 2016.
[5] San Francisco Opera. “Dream of the Red Chamber Moving Moment #1.” YouTube, September 13, 2016. https://youtu.be/KAWPQQY8ibE.
[6] San Francisco Opera. “Dream of the Red Chamber Moving Moment #3.” YouTube, September 28, 2016. https://youtu.be/6zN6UCV1nfA.
[7] San Francisco Opera. “Dream of the Red Chamber Moving Moment #6.” YouTube, September 28, 2016. https://youtu.be/6zN6UCV1nfA.
[8] Staff. “An Interview with Bright Sheng.” The Journal of the International Institute 7, no. 1 (Fall 1999).
[9] Sheng, Bright. Hua’Er Folk Songs of Qinghai, China. PDF file. 2001, p. 7. http://brightsheng.com/articles/essayfilesbybs/Huaer.pdf
[10] Oteri, Frank J. “Bright Sheng: My Father’s Letter and Bernstein’s Question.” NewMusicBox, March 1, 2019.
[11] Ibid.
[12] San Francisco Opera. “Dream of the Red Chamber Moving Moment #4.” YouTube, September 28, 2016. https://youtu.be/6zN6UCV1nfA.
[13] Sheng, Bright. Bartók, the Chinese Composer. PDF file. 1997, p.2. http://www.brightsheng.com/Sheng_essay/BARTOK.pdf
[14] Oteri, Frank J. “Bright Sheng: My Father’s Letter and Bernstein’s Question.” NewMusicBox, March 1, 2019.
[15] Co-librettist Hwang in a video interview with Opera America, said, “It was the epic tale of a Chinese family told across the generations, from its heights in the imperial court to its fall amid violence and palace intrigue.” Hwang and Sheng focused on the love triangle and political subterfuges, as well as circumstances from the author Cao’s family history for this version. OPERA America. “New Opera Showcase 2016: Dream of the Red Chamber — Interview with the Creators.” YouTube, January 5, 2016. https://youtu.be/Cxwya6qe31g.
[16] Translated from “我们面对的是文化背景截然不同的观众; 一面是对《红楼梦》不甚了解的欧美观众, 另一面则是国内外的红迷们." in “盛宗亮. 因梦生情 — — 歌剧《红楼梦》编剧初衷.” PDF file. http://brightsheng.com/articles/essayfilesbybs/编剧初衷3.pdf
[17] San Francisco Opera Staff. “Zombies, Wildlife, and Cartoons: Conductor Darrell Ang Reflects on a Life of Many Passions.” Opera Blog, April 25, 2022. https://www.sfopera.com/blog/2022/05/zombies-wildlife-and-cartoons-conductor-darrell-ang-reflects-on-a-life-of-many-passions
[18] Anthony, Michael. “How a group of Minnesotans brought a classic Chinese novel to life as an opera.” MinnPost, September 16, 2016.
[19] Oteri, Frank J. “Bright Sheng: My Father’s Letter and Bernstein’s Question.” NewMusicBox, March 1, 2019.
Additional Interviews:
Cheek, Rupert. “Interviews: Bright Sheng.” CheekyFest Live, January 31, 2021. https://cheekyfest.live/bright-sheng
San Francisco Opera Staff. “A Taste for Music: Composer Bright Sheng Shares His Creative Process.” Opera Blog, May 15, 2021. https://www.sfopera.com/blog/2021/may/a-taste-for-music-composer-bright-sheng-shares-his-creative-process
