Red Chamber goes to the opera
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E-mail China Daily, October 8, 2022
Revered novel is having a new outing, this time to the sound of music.
When Wang Liping was writing the soundtrack for the TV series Dream of the Red Chamber 35 years ago, it took him more than a year to decide on the theme song.
For Wang the challenge of writing music for this TV rendition of the classical novel written by Cao Xueqin during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was both exciting and daunting.
"No one, neither the director nor the actors, said we were going to make the TV adaptation a showpiece," Wang says.
"We all bore a heavy mental and emotional burden, working hard at our own roles.
"My days were very difficult, because the standard we set for ourselves was very high. I felt that I wasn't only writing for the audience of that time but also for people of the future."
Both the TV series and the soundtrack he wrote proved to be a classic, the album now having a rating of 9.8 out of 10 on review site Douban.
The soundtrack, with 12 pieces, is being merged with Peking Opera in an upcoming concert, Jingyun Honglou (Dream of the Red Chamber in Peking Opera style), to premiere at the National Library Arts Center toward the end of this month.
The veteran Peking Opera composer Zhu Shaoyu, who is responsible for the concert's music and sound design, says: "The story has been staged many times, in different regional traditional opera styles. But to present these well-known songs in Peking Opera style is a first, and I believe it's a more powerful way of presenting them."
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