<\/p>\n
Dragon Palace of the Eastern Sea in the San Francisco Opera premiere of Huang Ruo\u2019s \u201cThe Monkey King\u201d at War Memorial Opera House.<\/p>\n
(Cory Weaver \/ San Francisco Opera)<\/p>\n
San Francisco Opera well set the stage for this by going all out in connecting \u201cMonkey King\u201d with the city\u2019s large Chinese community through various outreach programs while also tapping into the way Chinese culture has long been a pervasive influence, and especially through music, in San Francisco life.<\/p>\n
Early in the century the composers Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison regularly visited productions of Peking Opera, which is \u2014 like \u201cJourney to West\u201d \u2014 an innovation of 17th century China and still regularly revived. It was thanks in significant part to Cowell that we came to have the genre we call world music. Harrison then made California a principal originator of the hybridization of Eastern and Western music.<\/p>\n
San Francisco Opera was late to the game (it has yet to stage a Harrison opera) but the company was a pioneer in the fusing of jazz and opera with Gunther Schuller\u2019s \u201cThe Visitation\u201d in 1967. In 2016, the company gave the premiere of Bright Sheng\u2019s \u201cDream of the Red Chamber,\u201d<\/a> which is, like \u201cMonkey,\u201d based on a classic Chinese novel and has a libretto by Hwang.<\/p>\n \u201cRed Chamber\u201d proved successful enough for a rare revival in 2022, but it never became the kind of sensation that \u201cMonkey\u201d boasts. \u201cMonkey\u201d forgoes the more integral hybridization, finding sensation in piling on as much on as possible.<\/p>\n Kang Wang as Monkey King with Basil Twist\u2019s puppet horses in the San Francisco Opera premiere of Huang Ruo\u2019s \u201cThe Monkey King\u201d at War Memorial Opera House.<\/p>\n (Cory Weaver \/ San Francisco Opera)<\/p>\n The plot basically sticks to the first seven chapters of the 100-chapter novel, which concerns an engagingly impulsive monkey who obtains superpowers and, to protect his monkey community, enjoys one wily adventure after another. But by getting away with anything, Monkey\u2019s ego grows. He often doesn\u2019t think of others and does what he wants, often without caring about consequences. After going through endless battles and conflicts in his journeys with a Buddhist monk (fodder for animated series, comics, films, television serials, Chinese operas and a celebrated rock opera by Damon Albarn<\/a>), Monkey ultimately finds enlightenment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n