Content area
Full Text
Mary Dibbern
On January 1, 1982, Carmen received its Chinese premiere by the Chinese Central Opera at the Theater of the Bridge to Heaven in Beijing. The production, conducted by Jean Périsson, staged by René Terrasson and sponsored by the AFAA (Association Française d'Action Artistique) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was sung in Mandarin Chinese with "subtitles" since, without the correct tonal intonation, Chinese is unintelligible. Carmen became the first Western opera to reemerge there after the long years of the Cultural Revolution. Among the members of the audience was a teenager who had recently arrived from the Western Chinese mining town of Datong; he had come to study drama at the Central Beijing Drama School. In January 1997, fifteen years later, I arrived in China to be the vocal coach for another production of Carmen , this time in French, and produced in Shanghai. And the young man, Zhao Jian-Hong, now 29 years old, and meanwhile a graduate of the Central Drama School, as well as of the Shanghai Music Conservatory, was cast as Escamillo in my production! Carmen continues her voyage, forging links between the peoples of the world!
Unlike the first Chinese Carmen , this one was sponsored by two Chinese organizations: the Jin Hai-Jet Air International Forwarding Co., Ltd., the Jin Jiang Tower Hotel, and by Swissair. It was produced by the Shanghai Opera House and the Shanghai Philharmonic and organized by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Broadcast, Film and Television. The guiding force behind all of these collaborators was Chan Bonko, a dynamic young businessman with a vision and the intelligence to realize it. Opera production is hard enough in countries where the structures are in place. Chan Bonko has overcome enormous odds in producing very successful, historic, original-language performances of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette in 1996, followed by Carmen in 1997. He has received support and advice for both projects from Monsieur Daniel Baillon, Cultural Attaché of the French Consulate in Shanghai.
Having worked for five years on an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and English translation of the text of Carmen (to be published in the fall of 1997 by Pst...Inc., Seattle), I was curious to try out the method of teaching French...