‘Dream of the Red Chamber’ based on an admired classic of Chinese literature from the 18th century, was first presented by San Francisco Opera in 2016, when it was highly praised and enthusiastically received. It will run this summer at the War Memorial Opera House from June 14—July 3.
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| Konu Kim as Bai Yu and dancers in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| Soprano Meigui Zhang as Dai Yu in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang’s opera returns in acclaimed production by director Stan Lai, Academy Award-Winning production designer Tim Yip and lighting designer Gary Marder. It’s an exquisite production that presents palaces and battles and bamboo forests and lakes and private interiors of great intimacy, detail and poetry and heightened authenticity.
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| Soprano Meigui Zhang as Dai Yu in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| Soprano Meigui Zhang as Dai Yu in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
‘Dream of the Red Chamber’
The source novel for Dream of the Red Chamber is arguably comparable in Chinese culture to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the West. It is widely known and continues to exert a powerful influence on romantic storytelling. The plot of the opera centers around the predestined soulmates Bao Yu, scion of the illustrious Jia family, and the brilliant but frail Dai Yu. Their union is complicated by a scheme to marry Bao Yu to the wealthy Bao Chai of the Xue family. |
| Soprano Meigui Zhang as Dai Yu in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| Soprano Meigui Zhang as Dai Yu in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
Born in Shanghai shortly before China’s Cultural Revolution, Bright Sheng is one of today’s foremost living composers who, as the MacArthur Foundation proclaimed, “merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries.”
Of his score for Dream of the Red Chamber, the Los Angeles Times observed, “He uses brass, winds and percussion (Western and Chinese) in original and highly imaginative ways.
Pitches bend in ways that sound almost acrobatically impossible. Chinese folk tunes get transformed into rapturously expressive new music, gorgeously colored.” Playwright David Henry Hwang, acclaimed for his many award-winning plays (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) and operatic collaborations (Philip Glass’ The Voyage, Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland, Howard Shore’s The Fly, Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and the forthcoming world premiere at Santa Fe Opera of Huang Ruo’s M. Butterfly), worked closely with Sheng on the work’s libretto, creating a three-hour opera from a vast literary epic.
World-renowned theater artist Stan Lai (Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land) returns to direct what the San Francisco Chronicle hailed “a magnificent production.”
The sets and costumes by Academy Award-winning designer Tim Yip (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) created opulent stage pictures, including an “amazing system of backdrops that rise and fall on cue, weaving together bits of rolling Chinese landscape in ways that are both literal and abstract” (Opera News) and lighting designer Gary Marder “bedecks the stage in vivid ornament while maintaining a suitably dreamlike atmosphere” (San Francisco Chronicle).
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| Guang Yang as Aunt Xue in an early rehearsal of Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| Francis Jue as the Monk (standing) and Konu Kim as Bao Yu (kneeling) in an early rehearsal of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber — photo Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
The genesis of Dream of the Red Chamber began when Pearl Lam Bergad, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Chinese Heritage Foundation, approached then-San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley in 2013 about producing an opera based on the novel. From the beginning, this musical and lyric setting of the timeless Chinese love story was to have an English libretto so it would be readily accessible to non-Chinese speakers. Sheng and Hwang’s opera became the first in San Francisco Opera history to feature bilingual supertitles with text in both English and traditional Chinese.
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| San Francisco Opera’s Dream of the Red Chamber (2016) ©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| San Francisco Opera’s Dream of the Red Chamber (2016) ©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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| San Francisco Opera’s Dream of the Red Chamber (2016) ©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
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San Francisco Opera’s Dream of the Red Chamber (2016) ©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera |
About the San Francisco Opera: New Ideas and New Works
San Francisco Opera’s InstigatorsEver evolving and updating, under the direction of Matthew Shilvock, San Francisco Opera will launch a new program in 2022 to pioneer new directions in opera. Instigators brings together bold innovators from outside the world of opera to envision future directions for the art form.
The Company will welcome cohorts of individuals from a diverse range of artistic and technological fields into a creative laboratory designed to provoke and expand the boundaries of the art form. The team will explore new ways to create and experience opera.
Since presenting Puccini’s then still-new triptych Il Trittico in its inaugural season of 1923, San Francisco Opera has been an exponent of new music and home for dramatic stories by contemporary artists. The Company has presented the American premieres of works by many twentieth century masters, including Francis Poulenc, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leoš Janáček, Olivier Messiaen and György Ligeti. Since 1961, the Company has been committed to commissioning new operas from living composers and presenting the world premieres of works by John Adams, Jake Heggie, Philip Glass, André Previn, Bright Sheng and others.
The Company will welcome cohorts of individuals from a diverse range of artistic and technological fields into a creative laboratory designed to provoke and expand the boundaries of the art form. The team will explore new ways to create and experience opera.
Since presenting Puccini’s then still-new triptych Il Trittico in its inaugural season of 1923, San Francisco Opera has been an exponent of new music and home for dramatic stories by contemporary artists. The Company has presented the American premieres of works by many twentieth century masters, including Francis Poulenc, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leoš Janáček, Olivier Messiaen and György Ligeti. Since 1961, the Company has been committed to commissioning new operas from living composers and presenting the world premieres of works by John Adams, Jake Heggie, Philip Glass, André Previn, Bright Sheng and others.
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| War Memorial Opera House — photo by John Boatwright |
For Tickets and Information
www.sfopera.com
The San Francisco Opera Box Office is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
The San Francisco Opera Box Office is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
Telephone (415) 864-3330.
San Francisco Opera Box Office hours are:
San Francisco Opera Box Office hours are:
Monday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Saturday 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (Saturdays phone only)
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