At the time when the premiere of Tan Dun and Zhang Yimou's opera The First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang) receives lukewarm comments from the critics, the landing of The Silver River in Ann Arbor arouses more anticipation. Unlike The First Emperor, The Silver River was created 10 years ago and it has won its renown on various stages including being the highlight of the 2000 Spoleto Festival, yet it shows that the experimentation of blending the East and the West still has a long way to go.

        Being familiar with the story of the Cowherd and the Goddess Weaver, I felicitated myself that I went to the Arts and Eats pizza dinner before the performance and heard David Henry Hwang (the librettist)'s introduction on the story of The Silver River. Because this story is quite deviated from the story I have known of. This story is more about the created character Golden Buffalo, about how she travels between heaven and earth, about how she match makes the Cowherd and the Goddess Weaver, and about how she admires the Cowherd-- for a while, I even doubted it is the love story between the Cowherd and the Golden Buffalo.

        This deviation lies in the intrinsic design of The Silver River. The Silver River is a music theatre, and indeed it almost includes all the musical and theatric elements, eastern or western: the Golden Buffalo is a dancer and narrator, the Jade Emperor is a Peking Opera actor, the Cowherd is played by an opera singer and a flute player, and the Goddess Weaver is played by a dancer and a pipa player. Yet the Golden Buffalo is the only one that speaks English, supposedly the only common language of the audience. Not only does she tell the story, she also serves as the interpreter of the Jade Emperor-- the Jade Emperor did sing a paragraph of Peking Opera in English at the end, but I couldn't make it out at the same time of trying not to laugh. Besides, the Golden Buffalo sometimes has to speak for the mute Goddess Weaver. Yes, mute, the dually represented Goddess Weaver is still mute, and she needs the Golden Buffalo's mouth to say how good a man the Cowherd is, so that her later falling in love with the man makes sense. The supposed central female character is mute while the hero sings-- this is such a challenge to the playwright and the composer. Their tremendous creativity did bring joy to the audience while watching the interesting interplay between the mute and the singing, but the problem is still there, and the very problem is created by their creativity. Had the Goddess Weaver sung too, there would have been no such problem and the love between the couple would have been more fully embodied, but the intercultural, multi-genre music theatre would be reduced to a routine musical with some decorating Chinese musical elements. The Silver River is experimentation, and it tested the limit of experimentation. This is what makes it unusual and fascinating, however, when the conveyance of ideas and feelings is limited by the effort of blending so many cultural elements and genres, it can also be interpreted as formalism.

        Had the combination of flute and pipa generated more impressive music, all the mentioned problems would not have been real problems, because no matter how fancy the stage design is, most of the audience goes to Power Center hoping for some innovated and memorable music. I hold high respect for the composer and UM Music School faculty Bright Sheng and I share his passion for pipa. Pipa and flute are supposedly to work well together since they contrast enough without contradicting too much, but it left me with a feeling that the potential of the combination was not fully explored in The Silver River. I understand that they were less than harmonious at the beginning which represented the discrepancy of life styles and background of the couple as David Henry Hwang mentioned, but to ears much exposed to traditional Chinese music like mine, the alleged "heavenly music" did not appear at the end.

        Blending elements from different cultures is hard, just as expressing my thinking in English is. It is especially hard when the audience is from different cultures, with very different background and levels of familiarization with the elements being blended. But a true masterpiece should possess the ability of transcending these barriers and bring enjoyment to all the audience alike. Although my optimism over such experimentation is slightly set back after watching The Silver River, I cordially anticipate more exploration from Bright Sheng, David Henry Hwang and others who have been devoted to bring the East and the West closer through music and theatre.
 

Goddess Weaver-pipa player in the foreground, and Goddess Weaver-dancer in the background; the Cowherd (the flute player and the singer) is in the upper section background