A Night at the Chinese Opera, British Youth Opera, Peacock Theatre, review

Judith Weir's A Night at the Chinese Opera is full of ingenious twists and bitter ironies, and is ideal for the British Youth Opera, writes Rupert Christiansen.

Catherine Backhouse in A Night at the Chinese Opera, performed by British Youth Opera at The Peacock Theatre.
Catherine Backhouse in A Night at the Chinese Opera, performed by British Youth Opera at The Peacock Theatre. Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

After the dismal flop of Judith Weir’s most recent opera Miss Fortune at Covent Garden earlier this year, it’s good to be reminded of her first success in the field, now 25 years old but still as freshly quirky and intriguing as it was when we first heard it in 1987.

A Night at the Chinese Opera is set in the 13th century, the era of Marco Polo and Kubla Khan, when Mongolia dominated Asia. Chao Lin, the central character, is a Chinese canal engineer, whose family have been forced to live in exile. Like Hamlet, Chao watches a play which weirdly mirrors the story of his own life and inspires him to take revenge on his persecutors.

The plot has further ingenious twists and bitter ironies, framed by the idea of a play-within-a-play, not all of which emerge on a first or even second viewing. But the music has immediate and strikingly idiosyncratic charm, taking its inspiration from Chinese models of music theatre rather than the western Renaissance tradition of opera.

Voices are often accompanied by only one instrument, the pace is urgent and clipped, speech and song are not clearly separated and percussion dominates over strings. Weir doesn’t aim to create a kitschy or gentle pastiche: the score’s idiom is emphatically alien and sometimes abrasive, but it seems perfectly adapted to the hauntingly ambivalent fable it embodies.

Being a work which offers no great technical challenges and must be huge fun to perform, this is ideal material for British Youth Opera, an invaluable summer school in which front-ranking professionals coach and mentor singers new to the business.

The cast here has been well-rehearsed and proves extremely adroit and musical. I’m reluctant to single anyone out, but I registered with pleasure the robust tenor of Samuel Smith (doubling as Marco Polo and a nightwatchman), the smooth baritone of Johnny Herford (Chao Lin) and Catherine Backhouse’s vivid stage personality (as one of the troupe of actors).

Lionel Friend conducts them and the Southbank Sinfonia with a meticulous ear for Weir’s subtle and varied palette of sonorities. I only wish that Stuart Barker’s visually fluent but excessively spare staging had elucidated the plot more forcefully: diction was clear, but in the absence of surtitles, the audience needed more help to establish dramatic situations, relationships and locations.

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