Zhang's hip-hopera hoopla

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By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-09 08:16

Ever since Zhang Yimou was invited to stage Turandot in Florence, Italy, in 1996, he has been fixated on this operatic gem. But the many productions he has undertaken do not vary much in concept and only slightly in execution. Yes, the venues change and the sets become larger and more extravagant, but what else?

In the holiday spirit of making things fun, I hereby propose a few more treatments that may bring in new audiences to an essentially elitist art form and offer some new takes on an old wives' tale.

Zhang could fuse opera and film with a blockbuster version resembling Hero, House of Flying Daggers or Curse of the Golden Flower. Gong Li is a perfect Turandot, with the radiance and imperial haughtiness to kill both royal princes and commoners alike. Who better to play Liu than Zhang Ziyi? She would be a slave girl who breaks millions of hearts. The pairing would once again set the tabloids ablaze and provide free publicity.

Calaf, however, is a problem. If the maestro wants an aging kungfu star, he'd go for Jet Li. If he seeks the Japanese market, Takeshi Kaneshiro is the right choice. If he wants to highlight a Freudian mother-son relationship, Jay Chou could work miracles.

What? Zhang doesn't want to turn it into a hip-hopera? No problem. He can go the way of Indian musicals and superimpose a soundtrack with Luciano Pavarotti or Placido Domingo lending their voices.

Zhang may look down his nose at an urban contemporary concept, but it may well work. Imagine Princess Turandot as a metropolitan girl with ravishing good looks and a bad attitude. She has a battalion of men courting her wherever she goes. To get rid of them, she devises a "sudden-death" game and all the losers suffer public humiliation. It would be like reality TV.

Liu is the girl next door who is friendly with Calaf, but he is so blinded by Turandot that he does not notice Liu's beauty and self-sacrifice. It is Turandot who points out the obvious to him. Gosh, this has been made into a movie before, called Waiting Alone, at least the second part of it. I propose Fan Bingbing and Li Bingbing in the female roles and let the two Bingbings duke it out.

My third suggestion is custom-made for the Water Cube, the venue right across from the Bird's Nest. I call it the Swan Lake treatment. Liu is the good swan, Odette, and Turandot the bad one, Odile. The prince is supposed to fall in love with the good girl, but like many men they are inexorably attracted to bad girls.

The story of Turandot originated in an Arabian fable but can be applied to any situation that involves one man and two women, and the man being tempted by the wrong woman. It is universal.

Zhang could substitute Puccini for Tchaikovsky, but as long as the little swans' cute dance numbers are preserved, and are easily reprised by Ping, Pong and Pang of the opera, Beijing audiences will leave humming a happy tune.