Jin Xiang’s Opera “Sunrise”: Chinese “La Traviata”
Authors: Ding Boyu 
Published: July 2023

The purpose of the article. In recent decades, modern Chinese opera has overcome national limitations and is increasingly attracting interested and appreciative listeners on different continents. Jin Xiang (1935–2015) is one of the modern Chinese composers who made this historical breakthrough with his work. He is the author of nine operas, among which the most famous was created in 1987. Wild Land (原野, there are also other translations of this title: “Plain”, “Desert”, “Big Field”) and “Sunrise” (日出) that was created in the last year of his life. And if a number of researchers have devoted their scientific works to the analysis of the first of them, thanks to a considerable amount of time — thirty-five years since its writing, then the second has not yet been thoroughly studied by Chinese and foreign musicologists. However, the success of its two first nights on the stages of Beijing (2015) and Shanghai (2017) and the artistic resonance of these cultural events certainly make it necessary to carry out a musicological and, more broadly, an art-critical analysis of this composition.

The methodology combines a purely musicological complex (music-theoretical, music-historical and music-performance methods), which contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the specifics of the operas “Sunrise” by Jin Xiang and “La Traviata” by G. Verdi, with the method of comparative analysis, which allows drawing conclusions about the specifics of the literary primary source, and the comparative method necessary to establish the similarities and differences of the storylines in the libretto of the operas “Sunrise” (by Wang Fang, one of Cao Yu’s daughters) and “La Traviata” (by Francesco Maria Piave), and the corresponding musical the specifics of the literary primary source, and the comparative method necessary to establish the similarities and differences of the storylines in the lib-retto of the operas “Sunrise” (by Wang Fang, one of Cao Yu’s daughters) and “La Traviata” (by Francesco Maria Piave), and the corresponding musical operas by Jin Xiang and G. Verdi.

The results. The analysis of the opera “Sunrise” allows us to state that it organically combines the national Chinese and European principles of music-theatrical drama. The composer’s reinterpretation of the Chinese tradition of singing in the part of the main heroine is successfully combined with the use of numerous European features in the parts of other characters, choral episodes, and sometimes also in orchestral accompaniment. All this allows us to emphasize Jin Xiang’s successful embodiment of one of the main lines in the works of numerous Chinese composers of the late XX and early XXI centuries: the desire to apply the dialogical principle “East-West”, which is realized in a combination of national and Western artists, in particular innovative — from the middle to the end of the XX century — traditions when they create modern bright opus.

The practical significance. Comparison of storylines, dramaturgical decisions and musical characteristics of the main characters, primarily female, of the European opera “La Traviata” and the Chinese “Sunrise” requires a more detailed musical and textual analysis, which can be logically carried out in subsequent publications. This should lead to a deeper understanding and comprehension of the trends that are inherent in this and a number of other bright opera works by Chinese composers of the late XX and early XXI centuries, which present modern Chinese musical culture to the world.