Prologue—Dragon Dance (A timeless void)
Amid the braying call of two Chinese trumpets, a water dragon and a fire dragon leap and swoop in the air. Out of their wake of fog, three women emerge: Ruth, a modern American-born Chinese woman; LuLing, Ruth’s mother, an immigrant woman from a previous generation; and Precious Auntie, a disfigured ghost from another world, who clutches a dragon bone.
Act I, Scene 1 (Fountain Court Restaurant, San Francisco, 1997)
For Chinese New Year, a family has gathered for a festive dinner: Ruth, her husband Art, her mother LuLing, her stepdaughters Fia and Dory, her in-laws Marty and Arlene, and an unseen ghost with a disfigured face. Ruth has chosen a menu of dishes symbolizing a lucky and harmonious family, but each dish is rejected as hideous by her husband’s family. LuLing privately despairs at her daughter’s inability to speak up for herself. Sensing her mother’s agitation, Ruth unveils the gift she bought for her birthday, a mink coat, which her relatives immediately condemn as inappropriate. But LuLing is overjoyed by the gift, as well as by Ruth’s recounting of her mother’s special devotion: her warnings of the disasters, insanity, and early death that awaited Ruth if she disobeyed. Her in-laws are impressed with how clearly a writer like Ruth has expressed her thanks. Art then proudly announces that Ruth is ghostwriting a book with one of the lawyers from the O. J. Simpson trial. LuLing offers to help Ruth write, claiming she was with O.J. when he slit the throats of his wife and her friend. As she re-enacts what she saw, everyone realizes LuLing is losing her mind. Angered that no one believes her, LuLing threatens to kill herself. As she storms away, she falls and is mortally injured. Ruth, now feeling guilty, cradles her until the ambulance takes her away. Art assures Ruth she is not to blame, that her mother has been making suicidal threats since Ruth was a child. When he balks at Ruth’s suggestion to let her mother live with them, Ruth becomes overwrought and speaks of killing herself. Art worries that Ruth is becoming like her mother. He offers to get the car and leaves Ruth utterly alone. Suddenly, an unknown woman caresses her cheek. It is the ghost, her face now unblemished. She cloaks Ruth in the garb of another era, and Ruth becomes her mother as a young woman. Together they follow a retinue of dead bodies leaping to the music of a Taoist monk exhorting, “The dead must return home.” And so, the ghost, Precious Auntie, and Young LuLing return to the village of Immortal Heart, where they can relive the tragedy that binds all three.
Act I, Scene 2 (Immortal Heart, a village outside Beijing, 1930s)
Chang the coffin maker extorts money from mourners, claiming that ancestor ghosts will haunt the cheapskates. He then goes to the Wang household’s ink-making studio, where he sells wood used to make ash, an ingredient of “long-lasting ink.” Chang leers at a slave girl, Young LuLing, who is delighted by the attention. Another maid known as Faceless One, spits at Chang and drags Young LuLing away. She is the woman Young LuLing calls Precious Auntie, a woman who claims she saved LuLing as a baby from an icy gutter. Chang secretly boasts that he’s had his way with this faceless woman, the daughter of the late bonesetter. Now he desires not only Young LuLing but what Precious Auntie has: a dragon bone, her inheritance from her father, her future gift to LuLing. When ground into medicine, it guarantees “longest-lasting life,” immortality. He had failed to obtain the bone when he murdered the bonesetter. Young LuLing, he schemes, will now be the means to his getting all that he desires. He strikes a bargain with Madame Wang, a good price on the wood in exchange for the slave girl as his concubine. Precious Auntie sees the secret barter and warns Young LuLing. She shows LuLing her scars to remind her of all the pains she has endured to raise her. But Young LuLing dreams only of a new life as the respected wife of an important man. She cites village gossip that Precious Auntie seduced Chang. Precious Auntie then offers Young LuLing what is as genuine as her words, the coveted dragon bone; Young LuLing gladly accepts it—as part of her dowry, exactly what her future husband wants. Senseless with despair, Precious Auntie grabs back the dragon bone and puts it to Young LuLing's throat. When Young LuLing screams for her life, Precious Auntie drops the bone, horrified at herself, and runs out of the room. Soon wedding guests and Chang’s many wives arrive at the wedding banquet. As the marriage rituals begin, Precious Auntie suddenly appears. She warns that if Chang marries LuLing, a curse will fall upon his family for generations to come and she will be the ghost to carry out the litany of horrors. With that, she drinks a ladle of boiling ink. As her body burns from within, flames rise and the whole world is destroyed.
Act II, Scene 1 (Hong Kong Harbor, 1940s)
Young LuLing, now a destitute young woman, joins a crowd of people who have lost their fate in the war and fled to Hong Kong. Men barter for tickets on a ship leaving for America. To earn her living, LuLing sets up shop on the harbor, writing letters for abandoned wives, pleading that their husbands send for them. A storm blows in and the crowd scatters home. Homeless, Luling seeks shelter among the crates. A man’s sweet voice calls to her, asking for a love letter with perverse promises. Precious Auntie screams unheard, trapped in a void, and Old Luling, in the present world, rises from her hospital bed and watches her past unfold. Young LuLing soon recognizes that the voice belongs to Chang and the crates around her are his coffins. He throws her atop a coffin and as she defends herself with the dragon bone, Chang is delighted to finally have all that he desired. When he commences the rape, Precious Auntie’s fury is enough for her to break out of her confines. She throws Chang to the ground. With the sharp dragon bone, she extracts his confession while slicing his face, chest, and crotch: that he murdered her father, raped her, and was about to rape his own daughter. Young LuLing now realizes Precious Auntie is her mother and Chang her father. As Precious Auntie comforts Young LuLing, Old LuLing joins them in a moment in which three generations broken by pain have become whole again, unified and inseparable in their understanding.
Act II, Scene 2 (A hospital room, San Francisco, 1997)
Young LuLing enters the present and becomes Ruth again. She goes to her mother, Old LuLing, who is disoriented as she approaches death. In a moment of lucidity she begs Ruth to forgive her for hurting her when she was a child. Precious Auntie, now a luminous vision, approaches Old LuLing, who calls to her long-lost mother, also asking her for forgiveness. She tells Ruth to let Precious Auntie wear the mink coat which Ruth had given her. As Ruth puts the mink coat on Precious Auntie, Precious Auntie places the dragon bone in Ruth’s hand so that the pain of the past is transformed into the strength of Ruth’s future. Ruth watches as her mother and grandmother merge into the fog and return to Immortal Heart.
- Amy Tan
An Excerpt from Fate! Luck! Chance! The Making of The Bonesetter's Daughter Opera by Ken Smith
The initial conception of The Bonesetter’s Daughter opera began with the birth of the novel, when composer Stewart Wallace was asked to write a short piece for Amy Tan’s 2001 publication party by their mutual friend Sarina Tang. Before long, it became clear—at least to Stewart—that his initial setting of the book’s opening lines for three female voices was the germ of an entire opera.
Its gestation, though, was delayed for several years as the artists pursued other ventures, resuming in earnest in 2004 when Sarina, by now the midwife as well as matchmaker for the project, gathered her friends for an extended birthday tour of China. In the next two years, the opera would log hundreds of thousands of air miles. A story about finding oneself by connecting with China took shape, appropriately enough, by connecting with China, with Chinese singers and instrumentalists, acrobats and designers all becoming part of the creative vision.
Sometime after our second trip together, Stewart became calling me his “spirit guide,” which seemed strangely appropriate. Having helped to facilitate their fateful meeting with Peking opera percussionist Li Zhonghua in 2004, my wife Joanna Lee and I coordinated and accompanied Stewart and Amy on two subsequent trips, ostensibly to listen to music, from urban opera to village funerals, but also to introduce them to a wide range of Chinese artists, from the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Ning Liang to the wind-instrument virtuoso Wu Tong, better known in China as the founding vocalist of Beijing’s most famous metal band.
Given Amy’s relative experience in China, their travel together was precisely the reverse of what one might expect, with the author largely—and comfortably—letting the composer take the lead. Particularly on their 2005 trip, Amy served as Stewart’s “second ear,” remaining largely in the background but ensuring that his musical inclinations were grounded in emotional reality.
Explorers of the old school famously ventured to exotic lands bearing swords. This group, a bit more harried and world-weary, came armed with cameras and recording equipment, their connection to Chinese culture soon blossoming and bearing unexpected fruit. And over time, the veteran opera composer and first-time librettist developed a working style organic not only to the material but also to their creative ideals.
By the time Stewart started singing sketches of his music to me over long distance phone calls, I realized my role was hardly limited to Chinese soil. The experience, in fact, put me in the best possible position to observe two supremely collaborative artists and discuss their working process at length.
The following comments, I should add, never took place as such in real time. Rather like a musical recording, they’ve been sliced and edited from multiple takes, sometimes with all of us in the same room, often not. Luckily, emails and conference calls have helped maintain the semblance of personal interaction.
AMY TAN: I’ve always felt that if I’m going to write about China, I have to go to China. For this project, I wasn’t going with any specific agenda in mind, though I knew we’d be listening to a wide range of music. I was not a big fan of Chinese music, I should admit. I knew a few pieces like The Butterfly Lovers, but they’re usually a little over the top for me emotionally. Chinese opera I didn’t understand—I mean I literally didn’t understand it: the language, the ritual, the movements; I had no idea which of the characters were good and who was evil. I wasn’t that much more schooled in Western opera, but at least I knew the basic conventions.
STEWART WALLACE: To say I knew nothing about Chinese music would be an understatement, but I’d used a Chinese cymbal in a percussion piece for Evelyn Glennie and I did want to learn more about percussion. You have to understand, I wasn’t going to write a “Chinese opera.” I wasn’t going to be “bridging worlds.” My music has always concerned itself with what it means to be American. But two things about Bonesetter were different from the start. The first was working with Amy, the second was going to China. By the time we set foot in China, everything changed.
AMY: When we first met the percussionist Li Zhonghua, he started playing through the instruments for Stewart. But pretty soon I started asking him narrative questions related to the book, like “What does it sound like when a ghost enters?” Or, “How does someone show that they’ve tragically lost someone?” And I realized that all this music that I thought was just empty ritual was actually very much alive with emotion and drama. It was not only harmonious in its elements but could really tell the story. At that point, it was not just seeing where the words and music interact, but also what parts of the story could be felt in the music alone.
STEWART: As soon as Amy started asking questions, I could see Zhonghua’s mind working. He wasn’t showing us what he could play—he was showing us his imagination. He’d trained as an actor and had that entire world in his mind. At first, he said, “But I’m only one person. I can only play one instrument at a time.” I told him just to play and let us piece it together. But we saw that everything in the music is highly interconnected, so I told him, “We came here to learn about Chinese percussion, but at this point, I'm interested in you. Would you be interested in joining us?” He said yes. “Have you ever played with a Western orchestra before?” He said no. And that was where we really began. It was purely in the moment—like many of the moments we had working on the opera, when something just happens.
STEWART: After that first China trip, I started doing a lot of pure research—studying the character types in Chinese opera, watching Hong Kong movies and Chinese film. The movies were initially very helpful. Rhythmically they capture the vibrancy on the streets better than anything I’ve heard. Soon after we got back from China, I saw Chen Shi-Zheng’s nineteen-hour production of The Peony Pavilion, which is a rigorous, intensive course in Chinese opera. At that point, I realized that Shi-Zheng was the perfect director for this project. His Peony Pavilion is not traditional Chinese opera, it’s a contemporary concept that he brought to the tradition. And in a way, it completed our circle, because Amy’s and my perspective is very American, and Shi-Zheng’s—having been born in China—is not.
AMY: We also started looking for singers—or I should say, Stewart did. I had no idea what to look for. All I cared about was that they could emote theatrically.
STEWART: We didn’t do any normal auditions, which are the most mind-numbing part of casting and don’t always tell you what a singer can do in any case. I was immediately very impressed with Qian Yi, the principal female singer in The Peony Pavilion. Right away, I realized the dramatic potential in having a singer from the world of Chinese opera play the grandmother as the ghost, the voice of tradition, the keeper of the family secrets.
AMY: Also, being a kunju performer, Qian Yi immediately solves one of our crucial problems. In the novel, Precious Auntie has no mouth, having been disfigured in a fire. She’s unable to talk, which is problematic for an opera. At first, we didn’t even know if it would be a singing role, but Qian Yi could do operatic gestures that would represent her inability to speak.
STEWART: After that first China trip we were waiting for [Harvey Milk librettist] Michael Korie to become available when I finally said, “Amy, let’s just start.” She said, “I don’t know what to do,” and I said, “I know what to do, and you know what to write.” So for the Prologue she sent me five or six pages structured as trios and solos, where each of the three women comes out and introduces herself in the most direct way possible. My music used three voices intermingling, largely based on the piece I originally wrote for Amy’s party. I incorporated the Peking opera percussion I’d learned from Zhonghua and wrote an opening scene for two suonas, the Chinese double-reed trumpet which had floored me at a Sichuan opera performance in Chengdu. The trick was writing music in my own language that felt Chinese without sounding ersatz Chinese, but I first had to figure out what that meant. You hear it in the timbre and texture, but also in terms of the space between the notes that lets the music resonate with a sense of ritual. In the opening Dragon Dance I was trying to recreate my first reaction to Chinese opera, where the stage is a container that can barely hold the energy vibrating inside.
STEWART: I was still processing what I learned from the first trip when Joanna asked, “What do you want to see when you go back?” Sonically, the Prologue was really a mythical place. For all its Chinese elements, it was actually a throwback to Harvey Milk, narrowing this huge landscape of legacy into a trio of very personal voices. But I’d only gotten the broadest strokes of China the first time, so for my second trip I realized I needed to see the country purely through music.
AMY: I went with Stewart the second time mostly to get the emotional feeling of the place, and to hear China through Stewart’s ears. I knew that he’d be listening for any musical textures he could take away. And being a dedicated music appreciation student, I wanted to know what he’d respond to and how those influences would come out in his voice.
STEWART: I particularly wanted to see as many different kinds of Chinese opera as I could. Then I found out that if you go to some of the minority villages you could find some of the old rituals we were interested in. I had no idea the extent to which the old culture had been decimated in the cities.
AMY: One of my most vivid memories from that trip—this might sound a little risqué—was watching Stewart working in the back room of a roadside restaurant surrounded by pornographic pictures. We’d actually been talking about the opening restaurant scene all day on the bus, and when we finally got off to eat, the rest of us were all out front waiting for the food to arrive while Stewart hurried off to the back room to start composing underneath those posters of naked western women.
STEWART: I think the single most powerful experience I had in China was the music we discovered at the village funerals in that second trip. My first reaction was, what is this Jewish kid from Texas doing in the middle of a very private ritual. Retroactively, it confirmed many of the choices I’d already made but couldn’t articulate at the time.
AMY: By the time Stewart and I met up that second time, he’d already been through at least two funerals and his mind was already turning. When we’d walk through villages, he’d get an idea and start humming. Suddenly, I was not only seeing the villages, I was hearing the villages. Everywhere we went had a very specific kind of sound.
STEWART: I’d been trying to find a character to balance Qian Yi—a male voice that was rough-hewn and clearly outside the Western operatic tradition. Then in Beijing we met Wu Tong at a party. I thought, “Jesus, what an amazing voice!” And then I found out he played Chinese wind instruments! We later sat down with my music, and he explained that some of my writing for suona was only playable by special horns, and the character of the sound would change quite a bit. So of course I revised it. The funny thing is, by the time I had my first lesson on the suona I’d already written about 40 minutes of music. During that trip, I also fleshed out my working relationship with Zhonghua. The way we’d work is, basically, he would show me things from his tradition and I would mess them up. And through that process we came to an understanding. At one point, Zhonghua pointed to his da luo and said. “Normally I play this on the beat. For you, I play off the beat.” And I think that speaks to the way we created our musical language. I really don’t know anything about the tradition intellectually. I went and I listened. I worked with the musicians, and I wrote. Which I now realize is also the way Amy writes. We absorb the things that interest us, and somehow in the process it becomes part of the creative language.
AMY: I guess in most operas the writer finishes the libretto before the composer goes to work, but in our case the process was different from the very beginning. For me, the first thing I had to keep in mind was that no one ever sits down and reads a libretto for fun. Its function is similar to a screenplay in that it’s there mostly to determine the overall structure of the piece. In both novels and short stories, most writers tend to overwrite, so I thought it was better just to get everything on the page and then later cut back to the most essential, the most powerful.
STEWART: With music it’s just the opposite. Composition is such a labor-intensive process that it’s better not to write too much. With Amy, though, overwriting turned out to be a real bonus. She always had a certain level of trust in that she’d lay out a lot of stuff, hoping that I would choose things she was happy with too. And then we’d go back and forth. When I got her six-page draft for the Prologue, my first step was to cherry-pick through the text, keeping her order of ideas for the most part but sifting through to find the most musical and informational bits and leaving out the conversational parts. And out of six pages of Amy’s wall-to-wall text, I sent back two pages of thin columns, ending with “I am like the village where I was born. Immortal Heart.” Amy looked at my rather severe edit and wrote back, “Oh, so that’s how it’s done.” And she never let me have any control like that over her text ever again.
Ken Smith divides his time between New York, where he writes for Gramophone magazine, and Hong Kong, where he serves as the Asian performing arts critic for the Financial Times. His book, Fate! Luck! Chance! The Making of The Bonesetter’s Daughter Opera will be published in August 2008 by Chronicle Books.
