Jeffrey Ching opera gets critics' unanimous praise

(First of two parts)

 Jeffrey Ching’s two-act opera “The Orphan”, which was staged in Germany’s Erfurt Theater last Nov. 29 and on six other dates, gained glowing praise from music critics of five German newspapers after opening night. Judging from their reviews, translations of which I have on hand, the critics unanimously admired Ching’s incredible erudition, vast background in ancient and early East-West history, drama and music, as well as his immensely creative imagination.

Opening night was attended by Ambassador Delia Albert, Vice-Consul Ana Marie de Vera, former Ambassador to the Philippines Herbert Jess and his wife Michelline (who came all the way from Bonn), Chinese Minister and Cultural Counsellor Lin Xin and Cultural Attaché Xhang Xiao.

Limited space allows only excerpts of the reviews. Gerhard Rohdo of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reputedly Frankfurt’s most prestigious newspaper, commented: “The opera starts with a mass murder in ancient China in the sixth century BC. The Zhao family fall victims of a massacre. Only a little child, the ‘orphan’ of the title, was spared — as if by a miracle — in order to grow up and take revenge for the crime, and to found a new state for the Zhao family. This theme is one of the founding myths of ancient China, to which one can identify parallels in other regions of the world. To this extent new forms of rule emerge from war and violence, death and destruction. Justice, which will be victorious in the end, remains too often utopian. To this extent, one can maintain that Ching’s opera is far from obsolete.

“The proximity of Ching’s opera to the ceremonial aspects of French Baroque becomes immediately apparent in the overture. Sounds of the early synthesizer called Ondes Martenot contrast with a Rameau overture; i.e., a ‘battle between Zhao Mengfu and Rameau’ in which the characters for the word ‘orphan’ in the calligraphy of Zhao Mengfu (around 1300) are transcribed into the sounds of the Ondes Martenot. Again and again, Ching succeeds in producing exciting contrasts, above all in the orchestral piece ‘Alsingo Sacrifices to the Spirits of the Ancestors’: this is a ghostly, whirring music which reminds one of the madness of Alys in Lully’s opera of the same name. Ching’s sonic imagination, his feel for instrumental color, is remarkably large. The musical gestures correspond exactly with the stage actions. Ching succeeds in producing a very sophisticated quintet when the grown-up orphan meets the spirits of his murdered ancestors.

“The premiere of Jeffrey Ching’s ‘The Orphan’ was a remarkable success.”

Joachim Lange of the Frankfurter Rundschau wrote: “Jeffrey Ching’s libretto in seven languages, based on historical sources, is not only a literary opera of exotic origin, it is also a conscious and intelligently thought-out attempt to establish, if not a dialogue of cultures, then their confrontation.

“The age-old Chinese horror story, which is based on a real event of the 6th century BC, and which was taken into the canon of Chinese literature in the 14th century, has a European history of reception, in which famous men such as Metastasio, Voltaire and Goethe participated. In the interior dialogue of the music for the opera, Ching refers to all this, by confronting time and again Asian sonorities with, for example, Purcell or Rameau, in a transformation of musical language.

“For Ching’s complex music, the Erfurt Orchestra was expanded to 80 musicians, with partially exotic instruments (from Ondes Martenot to glass harmonica, various kinds of gongs and tom-toms to electric guitar), and an impressive percussion installation played by six musicians. In the orchestral piece (no. 18) the whole orchestra unfolds its full acoustic splendor in a scene with the spirits, piling layers of overflowing, opulently whirring and escalating sonic invention out of the depths of time and space.

“Moreover, during the encounter of the grown orphan (the role tailor-made for Ching’s wife Andion Fernandez) with the spirits of his murdered ancestors and rescuers, Ching succeeds in composing one of the most beautiful quintets in the history of modern opera.” (Italics mine)

Erratum: With regard to my last column, Nomer Son writes that Reynaldo Reyes teaches at Townson, not Townsend U. The tyranny of the deadline led to the oversight. My own error was calling cellist Michael Coo Wellington. I should have included flutist Sonny Yangco in my list, particularly because it was through my intervention that he obtained a British Council grant for studies abroad.