Peking to Paris

Peking opera hit Paris last week, and Paris was fascinated. "The most beautiful spectacle in the world," marveled the weekly Carrefour, "More than original and singular . . . prodigious," said Le Figaro. "By comparison," added the awed Arts, "Frenchmen see themselves as barbarians." Night after night, the company, official representative of the People's Republic of China to Paris' International Theater Festival, exploded like a magnum of vintage champagne.

In truth, the potion was more like a pousse-cafe, an adroitly chosen series of excerpts from Chinese operas that--in China--may run as long as seven hours apiece. It went heavy on astonishing acrobatics, mimicry and comic pantomime, the spectacular sauce of the Chinese originals. What was left of the dramas was put across by exquisite, formalized gestures, e.g., a tearless eye elaborately wiped on a sleeve, a circular motion of a hand on breast to indicate meditation, a ritual lifting of feet as actors entered the stage. All these were perfectly punctuated by the gaudy sounds of nasal voices, rattling drums, clanging gongs.

Wicked Swish. The first number was from a century-old skit called The Three Encounters, in which a suspicious innkeeper crept into a knight's room at night, determined to kill him. What followed turned into a riotous pantomime. The two men groped toward each other as if they were in inky darkness, making fearful swipes with enormous, curved swords. The antagonists' darted, pivoted and leaped over each other while the reedy tones of a Chinese fiddle underlined the wicked swish of a snickersnee, and the soft boom of a gong gave sound to the sensation of naked steel flashing past an ear. "The whole scene," said an American, "is the funniest thing since the Marx Brothers were turned loose."

After that, there was a lyrical interlude about a pair of magical serpents, one white, one green, who turn themselves into girls, one loving, one murderous. Then followed a sensational display of acting, dancing and pantomime called Troubles in the Heavenly Kingdom, in which a talented performer named Wang Ming-chung played the part of the immortal Monkey King who defeated the gods in a rough-and-tumble battle. Finally came an acrobatic ballet and a short, exotic concert on stage, featuring such instruments as the hsiao (bamboo flute), sheng (a super mouth organ), hsiao-na (a straight wooden bugle with a copper bell) and several small drums. When it was all over and the audience was applauding thunderously, the whole troupe appeared onstage and returned the applause--an innovation of the Communists to show solidarity between workers onstage and off.

From the Moon. Peking opera, the most famed and influential of many Chinese schools, is a mere 1,241 years old. Its founder was Emperor Hsuan who set it up, so the story goes, after he visited the moon and developed a taste for the entertainment in the Jade Palace of the lunar emperor. Luxurious as it is, Chinese opera is true popular entertainment, attended by anybody who can spare a few pennies, until its plots and morals have become a basic part of the culture.

Before the Communists took over, the public lounged at performances, eating, chatting over the clangor of the orchestra, nursing their young, knowing the plots by heart.

The new regime decreed better audience manners. But the Communists recognized a well-oiled propaganda machine when they saw one, changed only a few operatic traditions. "We reject pieces which only serve to develop a base and servile mentality in regard to feudal chiefs, or which injure the people by showing them scenes of cruelty, horror, immorality or superstition," explained a party-line pamphlet.

It bothered the French hardly at all that they were being served up operatic chop suey. (Groused one dissenter:"What opinion would the Chinese have of . . . our theater if we offered a program composed in this fashion: 1) entertainment from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 2) entertainment from Le Malade Imaginaire, 3) chorus and finale from Psyche, 4) excerpts from Lully?") Essentially Paris was completely charmed by the freshness and novelty of it all. It was, as Critic Claude Baigneres said, "a theater which makes an absolute synthesis of dance, music and mime . . . where everything conspires in favor of the most aristocratic pleasure."

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