Mackay opera in Taiwanese makes music history
At that time, Chin did not know that“The Black Bearded Bible Man”as a Taiwanese production in the western operatic tradition would take a while to create and produce. Chin said that he approached the Mackay Hospital for financial support but the board turned him down.
“Tchen Yu-chiou, the then chairman of the Council for Cultural Affairs, encouraged me by promising to find the funding to support the production,”he recalled.“However, Tchen stepped down from her post before I could finish writing the opera.”
The project had to be shelved for a while. In the end, the National Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center, where Tchen happens to be board chairman today, helped Chin realize his dream opera production.
Chin said that he did not use any particular opera as model and influence when he was composing his new and contemporary opera about Mackay. He wanted to write an opera that would make the people in Taiwan intuitively realize the music as possessing “Taiwanese flavor.”He, in fact, wanted the music to be “both localized and universal.”He did try to avoid coming up with what was“exotic.”
Chin explained:“My concern at the outset was to communicate. I felt that I must speak in a language which my listeners will understand and appreciate. I also want my singers to be able to enjoy singing the opera.”
The Taiwanese composer spoke of the challenges in the intellectual, emotional and technical levels, which confronted him as he tried his best to link his music with certain elements in the script. The story, however, was all about a hero. A villain would have conveniently spiced up the scenario, he thought.
But the opera was centered on one single, dominant character. Even Joyce Y. Chiou, the playwright or librettist, remarked that the existing biographies about Mackay she read before she embarked on writing the libretto told the same story of a good man with hardly any shortcoming. A single line describing the missionary as“short-tempered”was all she succeeded in digging out regarding Mackay's negative side.
She, however, also pointed out: “Mackay had to deal with inner conflict. And in addition, the people who mostly practiced folk religion turned against him.”
Lukas Hemleb, the director, revealed that he had much more time than was usually the case in preparing this opera project. Work started in January this year. He came to Taipei twice, in May and July, before the start of the rehearsals.
What really surprised him when he came was that the orchestra had already rehearsed the music and had even done a recording of the score but without the singers. This meant that everyone participating in the project could actually listen to the music. Therefore, there was no room for surprise.
Hemleb described such preparation as“fantastic!”This was something he had never seen in a contemporary music production. His past experience told him that the first orchestral rehearsal revealing how the music really sounded took place 10 days before the premiere.
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