Peking Opera with a difference comes to London

A groundbreaking production fusing traditional Chinese opera with Western classical music will be staged in London on Thursday, when a performance inspired by the life of Cai Lun, the man credited with the invention of paper, takes place at Jerwood Hall in London.

The performance, called Ein Heldenleben: Cai Lun, which translates as A Hero's Life: Cai Lun, has been conceived, written and directed by acclaimed Chinese theatrical figure Chen Xinyi, who is best known for having devised the performance style known as symphony poetry drama.

Its soundtrack is music by 19th century German composer Richard Strauss, in a style called a tone poem, which is a single continuous movement, made up of sequences that are in the style of chapters or verses, rather than being divided into standalone movements, as in a symphony work.

Although Cai Lun's greatest contribution to world civilization is his invention of paper, it is his life as an imperial court eunuch in the time of Emperor He, and the court intrigues in which he found himself involved, that caught the imagination of the show's creator.

"He's a giant icon of China, whose invention changed human civilization and advanced cultural progress, but he also experienced misfortune in life that evoked my sympathy – he is a super-dramatic character," she explained.

With specific details of his life hard to come by, she said, the piece is "inspired by his life, not a portrait of it – it's theater art, not a history story".

Setting the story of someone in China in the ancient past to music written hundreds of years and thousands of kilometers away may seem unlikely, but Chen said as soon as she heard it and got to understand what Strauss's music was depicting, the pairing came together.

Strauss divides this particular piece into six segments, illustrating the journey through life of the eponymous hero, and the triumphs and adversities he encounters along the way, which Chen said match perfectly with Cai Lun's life.

"One day, in 2019, I had been rehearsing the Giacomo Puccini opera Turandot at the National Theater of China and at the end of the day I was exhausted, when the orchestra manager came and said to me 'there's a performance tonight of something called The Hero's Life, you have to come and hear it'," she explained.

"I said no but he ended up pushing me there in a wheelchair, and when I got to the venue I felt like falling asleep, but as soon as the music started, I began to get visions of Cai Lun, and then I read the program and saw how the titles of the different sequences in the piece followed this hero's journey, and I could see how they fitted together."

Combining Chinese theater and Western symphonic music is something that Chen has been exploring for the last 20 years, with eight symphony poetry dramas having been performed previously, but this is the first one that has come to the United Kingdom – something she had long wanted to do.

"This country is the home of William Shakespeare, someone who I admire greatly, and there is the connection between him and the great playwright Tiang Xianzu, who emerged in China at the same time," she explained. "Then, about 200 years ago, Europe saw the rise of symphonic music at the same time as China saw the rise of Peking Opera, which is a special art form that uses characters to express emotions in the same way that symphonic music does, so these are two great performance styles that I love to bring together, and London is a city where I particularly wanted to do it."

The theater company only arrived in the UK less than a week before the performance, which meant a tight rehearsal schedule for performers and musicians to get to know one another and build an artistic relationship, but Chen said she was hopeful it would be a voyage of discovery for both sides.

"We have rehearsed in China with a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the music, and years ago, when we were originally hoping to have come over before the pandemic, we gave a video of our performance to the orchestra, conductor and orchestra manager so they could see what we were doing," she said. "They really liked it so it will be interesting to see how the orchestra feels about it when we come together."

Chen Xinyi Art Center presents Ein Heldenleben: Cai Lun, performed by the Fidelio Orchestra, conducted by Raffaello Morales, at Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke's, London, on Oct 17.