JADAR

★★★★☆

A unique theatre experience, Ein Heldenleben · CAI LUN celebrates the life and death of Cai Lun, the inventor of paper. His story is told through Peking Opera style performance, set to Ein Heldenleben, a symphonic poem by German composer, Richard Strauss. Brought to the stage by Chen Xinyi, and beautifully accompanied by the Fidelio Orchestra, this piece revolves around the theme of heroism and the heroic legacy of masters of their crafts.

Chen Xinyi, one of China’s most renowned directors, has spent over 20 years exploring the combination of symphony music and theatre, and this new aesthetic form has been named ‘Symphony Poetry Drama’, Western classical music infused into classical Chinese drama.

Introducing the first half of the performance, Chen Xinyi herself speaks about her early love of classical music, listening to Bateshoven’s 5th symphony and Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony at the age of 19 performed in a sports stadium in China. She draws parallels between Straus and Cai Lun, both of whom she considers to be heroic figures, and explains the process of creating a “Symphony Poetry Drama”, which begins with the music first, plotting Cai Lun’s story over the top of the thematic beats of the symphonic poem.

In the stead of the director, I will too start with the music. Ein Heldenleben was composed in 1898 by Richard Strauss. Symphonic poems, or tone poems, are generally single-movement orchestral pieces, designed to evoke a specific narrative or picture, allowing composers to tell stories without words. The piece is generally agreed to be autobiographical, with the movements detailing the rise and fall of Der Held, the hero.

The music has been described often by critics as brazen, obnoxious, sharp – with few moments of the warm, rounded symphonic feel which many associated with orchestral music. They are few and far between, but there are some incredible solos to be enjoyed which punctuate the piece, my favourite being the first violin in ‘Des Helden Gefährtin’ (The Hero’s Companion), which represented Strauss’ wife. The solo was vibrant, changing emotions second by second, punchy and coquettish. 

Above the orchestra, there is a screen where flashbacks and dream-like sequences play out along with subtitles (as the entire show is performed solely in Mandarin). In front of the orchestra, a small stage which hosts the two main actors – Cai Lun and his father, wearing traditional Peking Opera costumes and make up, who are reunited before the soon-to-come death of Cai Lun, decreed by the Emperor of China. Guan Dongtian is a brilliant great Laosheng (old man) as Cai Lun’s father, and Chen Lincang plays our hero, Cai Lun himself.

The pacing of the first half of the play is slow, which is traditional in Peking Opera, and while modern Peking Opera style performances may have quickened the pace for a modern audience, I personally enjoyed the juxtaposition between the swelling orchestra and the dramatic, traditional storytelling on stage and screen.

The changes in emotion while the characters conversed, often repeating phrases back and forth verbatim with extreme differences in tone, worked well with the fluctuating emotions of the music. The actors (both live and recorded) reminded me of marionette puppets, faces painted and exaggerated, moving in stylised, uncanny ways, and then held still in place as if on strings, vignettes against the often tumultuous movements of Ein Heldenleben. 

Cai Lun entered the service of the imperial palace in 75 CE and was made Head Eunuch in 89 CE as well as Shangfang Ling, responsible for the crafting of weapons and instruments for Imperial use. The first half of the play details the banishment of Cai Lun to the Qinling mountains. Once a eunuch of high prominence in the royal household, holding positions only eunuchs could, he was implicated in the political assassination of Lady Song, a concubine whose son was going to be heir to the throne and exiled.

While his father laments the fact he lost his manhood to work in the palace just to be caught in political scheming, Cai Lun retorts “my destiny is to seek the extraordinary, explore unreachable heights, that is my destiny”.

The play reveals at this moment to be about hubris, about rising above no matter the means, all to become renowned for your craft. It is fitting that this speech is mapped onto the end of ‘Des Helden Gefährtin’ (The Hero’s Companion).

While the climactic end of the movement is likened to an erupting love scene, the love of Cai Lun’s life is his craft, his ingenuity and his skillmanship. But it is tinged with a lament for his loss – his castration a metaphor for a loss of self, a loss of self which led to his compromised moral self in the face of political pressure. But triumphantly, the act ends with a statement he will reclaim what he has lost.

The second act starts with the fourth movement, ‘Des Helden Walstatt’ (The Hero at Battle). The characters are still off stage, and the Fidelio Orchestra shines. The movement is percussion led, with snare drums and bass drums and symbols, aggressive melodies in conflict, lacking subtlety as all true battlefield music should.

For fans of Strauss’ work, the movement after, ‘Des Helden Friedenswerke’ (The Hero’s Works of Peace), moves into a more philosophical space, where he quotes all of his previous tone poems, one of his own operas and two of his songs.

On screen, we see the story of Cai Lun setting up a paper production mill in his exile in the mountains, with photos of origami overlaid with the story of the hope and prosperity he brought to the people in the village in giving them the means to craft something new and unique, and, above all else, of immense value.

In Qinling. “he transformed fishermen into craftsmen”. Both Strauss and Cai Lun are heroes in the play because they gave themselves to their crafts, and their worlds live on to this day.

In this movement, Cai Lun also reflects on his rise in the Imperial palace, the sacrifice made to end his family line to become a master in his craft, to have his name graved into the Emperor’s ceremonial swords, and even in exile, to be revered for his greatest achievement: paper.

So, while he had no sons to carry on his name and legacy, he exclaimed to his father, “I may die, but my paper will live on”. This scene is delivered with more pace, urgency, I’d even call it ecstasy, as only a man at the end of his life may experience, rushing closer to his own death, mirroring the music of Ein Heldenleben closer than at any other part of the performance.

In the final moments of the play, ‘Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung’ (The Hero’s Retirement from this World and Completion), Cai Lun presents his father with a box containing his manhood, which had been kept all this time at the Imperial Palace. He bribed a palace guard with paper to acquire it. The final act of triumph before our dramatic hero takes his own life – giving up a part of yourself to achieve renown, using that new renown to reclaim what you gave up at the start. The music is serene, peaceful, fulfilled at last.

Speaking about our dramatic hero, Cai Lun, Chen Xinyi sets out to “tell his story through symphony”, and from beginning to end, I was immersed in the story being told. While admittedly new to both Peking Opera and the work of Richard Strauss, the layering of the two proved a truly unique combination of artistic tradition.