Diorama of the proposed stage set for the opera Rickshaw Boy Photo: Courtesy of National Centre for the Performing Arts

After being adapted into stage dramas, a movie, a TV drama and an animated TV series, one of the most representative social novels of early life in Beijing, Rickshaw Boy (Luotuo Xiangzi, 1936) by writer Lao She, is now being turned into an opera. Commissioned by the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), the production finds Chinese musician Guo Wenjing teaming up with his long time partners play writer Xu Ying and director Yi Liming, who previously cooperated on the opera Poet Li Bai.

As one highlight of the summer opera season, the opera will premiere at the NCPA from June 25 to 28. After that, the creative team is planning a world tour in order to take this Chinese-styled opera international.

"I spent over two years writing this," said Guo at a press conference at NCPA on Monday. "I was very serious about this opera. I never gave up, no matter how tired I was."

Social realities

The story of Rickshaw Boy centers on a robust rural rickshaw puller in Beijing during the 1920s named Xiangzi, who is working to save money to purchase his own rickshaw so he can be his own boss.

Huniu, the daughter of Xiangzi's boss Liu Siye, falls in love with Xiangzi. Seducing the book's hero one night after he gets drunk, she tricks him into marrying her after announcing that she is pregnant at her father's birthday party. Though Xiangzi fails to escape this woman, he manages to use Huniu's money to buy himself a new rickshaw. However, his life turns dark again after Huniu dies during childbirth and he is forced to sell his rickshaw to bury her.

After his wife's death, Xiangzi falls in love with Xiaofuzi, a resigned woman whose own father sold her to a brothel. Eventually Xiangzi's heart is broken when she commits suicide. Honest and kindhearted at first, the character of Xiangzi gradually becomes a degenerate after his dreams of getting rich through hard work are broken time and time again.

"Usually in tragedies, the main characters die, but in this story, we witness how Xiangzi falls so far that he ends up in a life worse than death," said Yi, explaining that their adaptation is strictly based on the original theme of social realism. "There's hardly a kind person to be found in this story, as everyone was living in misery at that time."

A dash of local flavor

Yi designed the stage set based on old photos of Beijing taken by foreigners in the 1930s. "We went back to a basic stage design that doesn't use modern multimedia," said Yi, moving on to praise Guo for how his music ties together all eight sections of the opera.

Though at first impression the story contains a heavy taste of old Peking, the music Guo wrote is more typical of Western opera, emphasizing lyrics to bring the opera's story into full play.

"I wrote some arias for the main characters. They are more about expressing emotion than traditional old Peking-styled dialogs. I didn't focus on making the opera local, so I believe it won't be difficult for Western audiences to understand the story," said Guo.

As part of his preparation for writing the music, Guo also studied local music and styles, such as the folk songs of Hebei Province and a type of traditional story-telling that uses a drum to accompany stories told in the Beijing dialect.

"We can hear some local tunes appear in the chorus and some arias. For instance we can find some traces of Hebei folk music in one of Xiaofuzi's arias. However, this can't be considered the main style of music used in this opera," said Guo.

New interpretations

"We selected the actors and actresses in a very strict way for this show. Not only judging their singing talent, but also how they represent the personality of Xiangzi and other important characters in the novel," said Deng Yijiang, vice director of NCPA.

In most adaptations of Rickshaw Boy, Xiangzi is a silent young man of few words. In the movie version of the book, actor Zhang Fengyi's portrayal was so close to the book that it became the de-facto image of Xiangzi in the minds of many Chinese.

"This is how people believe Xiangzi should be, which also puts pressure on us," Deng added, explaining that Chinese audiences' familiarity with the story makes it hard for actors and actresses to reinterpret the characters as they see them.