Mary Dibbern
Accompanist and Vocal Coach

Recitals with Kurt Ollmann. Click for information

Coach's Notebook:  Carmen in Shanghai
The Opera Journal, Volume XXX Number 3
September, 1997
Reproduced with permission
(click photos to enlarge)

On January 1, 1982, Carmen received its Chinese premiere by the Chinese Central Opera at the Theater of the Bridge to Heaven in Beijing. The production, conducted by Jean Périsson, staged by René Terrasson and sponsored by the AFAA (Association Française d'Action Artistique) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was sung in Mandarin Chinese with "subtitles" since, without the correct tonal intonation, Chinese is unintelligible. Carmen became the first Western opera to reemerge there after the long years of the Cultural Revolution. Among the members of the audience was a teenager who had recently arrived from the Western Chinese mining town of Datong; he had come to study drama at the Central Beijing Drama School. In January 1997, fifteen years later, I arrived in China to be the vocal coach for another production of Carmen, this time in French, and produced in Shanghai. And the young man, Zhao Jian-Hong, now 29 years old, and meanwhile a graduate of the Central Drama School, as well as of the Shanghai Music Conservatory, was cast as Escamillo in my production! Carmen continues her voyage, forging links between the peoples of the world!

Unlike the first Chinese Carmen, this one was sponsored by two Chinese organizations: the Jin Hai-Jet Air International Forwarding Co., Ltd., the Jin Jiang Tower Hotel, and by Swissair. It was produced by the Shanghai Opera House and the Shanghai Philharmonic and organized by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Broadcast, Film and Television. The guiding force behind all of these collaborators was Chan Bonko, a dynamic young businessman with a vision and the intelligence to realize it. Opera production is hard enough in countries where the structures are in place. Chan Bonko has overcome enormous odds in producing very successful, historic, original-language performances of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette in 1996, followed by Carmen in 1997. He has received support and advice for both projects from Monsieur Daniel Baillon, Cultural Attaché of the French Consulate in Shanghai.

Having worked for five years on an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and English translation of the text of Carmen (published by Pendragon Press), I was curious to try out the method of teaching French using IPA with the Chinese singers. I had already worked with several of them the previous season for the first French language production of an opera to be produced in China, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. However, for that production, I arrived after British director Timothy Coleman had begun the staging rehearsals, and there was little time to correct the highly flawed French of the mostly Chinese cast. In spite of this, Coleman, collaborating with Chinese conductor Yu Long, was able to put together a lovely, traditional staging, beautifully sung and acted.

For this second Chinese production, Chan Bonko and I agreed that it would be better for me to come several months ahead of time and work in detail on every aspect of the language and music. So one chilly January day in 1997, I arrived in Shanghai, anxious to greet my colleagues from the previous year and to meet the new ones. The Shanghai Opera and Chan Bonko had already chosen several casts, so I had a large number of singers to teach. We had daily lessons from mid-January until the beginning of April --barely enough time to teach 18 singers their words and in some cases, the music as well! The art of vocal coaching has not yet reached China, so while there are very capable and even brilliant solo pianists, there are no opera coaching specialists. My only disappointment in this project was that I was not able to train some pianists along with the singers. However, the Opera company was producing a Chinese opera at the same time as my work on Carmen, therefore the pianists hired by the company were busy rehearsing for that production and were unable to attend my lessons.

We worked every day from 9 to 5 in the Opera headquarters, a lovely old art deco style building on Chang Shu Road in the midst of Shanghai's French quarter. Shanghai's old and unfortunately quite dilapidated buildings are rapidly being destroyed to make way for the new, but there are enough of the old buildings left to give some idea of what Malraux's Shanghai (La Condition humaine) might have looked like. The Shanghai Opera and Dance Troupe no longer have a permanent performance venue; their small hall was destroyed in a fire. Instead, they must rent performance space. They do, however, have a small rehearsal hall, areas for building sets (mostly outside, when it isn't raining) as well as modest housing for the members of the troupe, which includes dancers, orchestral musicians, singers, set builders, etc.

I asked the singers to work in pairs--two each of Carmens, Don Josés, Zunigas, and Moralès. The Frasquita and Mercédès (one each) worked as a team, as often did the Dancaïre and the two Remendados. One Escamillo arrived a month late, so I began with our friend from Datong and worked the other one into the schedule later. By then, I had been studying Chinese for about a year, so was able to communicate in a basic way and used the dictionary when I didn't know a word. The singers appreciated the effort I made, and by April I was able to understand their speech quite well and to speak, however haltingly.

The use of the IPA for foreign singers is essential to singing in French, because modern written French contains so few pronunciation clues for the uninitiated. By rewriting everything in phonetics, it becomes clear that the language contains a limited number of quite precise sounds, whereas the same sound can be spelled in many ways and, until one knows the complex rules, there is no way to guess at it. There are many silent consonants, and of course, when one is required to pronounce (or not, as the case may be) these normally silent consonants in a formation known as a liaison, the problems become more complicated.

Since my Carmen book was not yet published, I wrote everyone's role in IPA into their scores by hand as we progressed. This was quite time consuming, but I found that several singers, once they saw the system, would return the next day, having written out their idea of the following scene's IPA transcription themselves and, by correcting it together, we were able to make even faster progress.

It was much easier for the Chinese singers to read the text in IPA symbols. Since their language contains thousands of complex symbols, their memories are excellent and it was easy for them to quickly learn the relatively few symbols contained in the French IPA. Pronouncing the French language presents no problem for natives of Shanghai. In fact, the Shanghai Chinese language (completely different from Mandarin or Cantonese), contains all of the sounds of the French language. The adult and children's choruses were able to write out their parts phonetically using Chinese characters from their language, and their pronunciation was absolutely perfect. I might add that it is no coincidence that Shanghai and Paris have a long history of mutual admiration and understanding; the people of Shanghai are very close in physical and even psychological type to the French. They are small-boned, agile, clever people with a strong sense of personal pride and a quick temper.

Most of the non-Shanghai singers learned to pronounce French fairly well; however, singers from other regions did not have it easy. For instance, Wu Jing-Yan, a tenor from Mongolia, was singing Remendado. He does not possess the [v] sound in his dialect, but instead substitutes a [w]. Neither is he capable of making a pure, forward [u] vowel. Instead, the [u] is so far back in the throat as to be almost silent. One can imagine his difficulty in singing: "Nous avons besoin de vous"! However, he was determined to correct this flaw, and brought his tape recorder to all of the lessons. His colleagues told me that he spent hours in his room, intoning the lines until he could pronounce them. Another type of problem was encountered with the elegant Jin Yu-Lan, a Chinese girl of Korean origin who, I learned, had problems with correct pronunciation even in Chinese. She found the French extremely difficult to articulate. We worked for several months on her recitatives, notably her line: "Il dit que le corregidor veut que l'on ferme l'auberge." Our approach was to learn to pronounce one sound at a time, and only when this sound was comfortable did we go on and add in the next sound. So for a week, she was only allowed to say: "Il dit que"--then when that was comfortable: "Il dit que le", etc.

Our general method of working was quite simple. We worked in groups, speaking each phrase, first slowly and then in the musical rhythm. When I felt that the singers in each group were able to do this fairly easily, we put each phrase to music. I started out each morning at 9 with Zhu Qiou-Ling and Xu Yi-Yun (the two Carmens), and spent an hour or more a day with them, since the role is so demanding. The singers were mostly double-cast, and I found that their non-competitive spirit of cooperation was delightful. As time passed, I began to call the singers in according to scenes, so that they had a chance to work together. The Frasquita and Mercédès always came together, as did Remendados and the Dancaïre. About a month after we started, another Frasquita arrived one morning, quite eager to participate, but did not know a word or a note of her part. I had to explain that it was too late to start, since by this time my other cast members had progressed quite far and there were not enough hours in the day for me to devote to starting with someone else. She was a beautiful girl and seemed so disappointed. I was afraid that my reaction would cause some kind of "incident" with the very sensitive Chinese, however, it seems that they agreed with me, so luckily this potential source of conflict was avoided.

After everyone had studied individual roles of the entire opera, we started over, working out the meaning and motivation behind each scene. Luckily a Chinese translation was written into their scores. We studied each scene, first reading it in Chinese, trying to make sure that everyone included in the scene understood who was speaking to whom, and what the emotion was behind the words. I found that many of them seemed quite inhibited in their acting, barely daring to look at each other. However, when I later returned to see the production, this was no longer a problem. The Chinese people are, in general, quite outgoing and have an intense sense of drama. After they interpreted the words of Carmen in Chinese, they read the same scene in French, and we tried to make sure they understood exactly what they were saying in this language.

I especially spent a lot of time with the Carmens and the Don Josés. We had two tenors, the excellent Wei Song and the young, quite gifted Li Jian-Lin. Both are students of Zhou Xiao-Yan, one of the most famous voice teachers in China, and very probably one of the best teachers in the world. For many years, she collaborated with Christine Bullin at the San Francisco Opera Center, and together they discovered and developed many fine Chinese talents. Her students made up the majority of the cast, and she came over to listen to them occasionally, providing moral support for the group, as well as private lessons for her students. Madame Zhou herself studied in France during the second World War, and several of her students already had a very good idea of the French language, making my job much easier.

There were, however, many cultural ideas that were hard to transmit as I explained the text in detail. One day we were working with the Zunigas and I asked Jiang Hai, the older of the two, to give more color to the words: "Au diable avec tout ce bavardage." However, I couldn't find the word for "devil" in my English-Chinese dictionary. The only word there was "ghost"--not quite the same. I asked him if he knew about the devil who lives in hell, and met with a totally blank reaction. Trying another tactic, I explained that in the Christian religions of the West, when one dies, one either goes to heaven with God, or one goes to hell with the devil. Hoping to make the link, I asked: "And where do Chinese people go when they die?" With the sweetest smile imaginable, Jiang Hai said very gently: "All Chinese people go to heaven when they die, Miss Mary."

After several weeks of rehearsal, Zhang Jie-Min, the assistant conductor, announced to me one day that we were to perform parts of the opera for certain officials, including He Zhao-Hua, the director of the Chinese Shanghai Opera and Dance House. I didn't feel that they were ready, but had no choice in the matter! In honor of the occasion, they had finally brought a little electric heater into the rehearsal room...it didn't do much good, but it was a nice gesture. We had started our work in late January, and until March we all worked with the same clothes on that we wore outside; for me, that meant a thermal undershirt, a turtleneck, a wool sweater and another heavy cotton sweater over that--then of course, my wool coat and scarf. On the days when there was sun, the very pleasant, large room was almost comfortable. However, there often was no sun, so we kept our coats on and drank hot tea. Normally, I would not have tolerated such conditions, but I had a beautiful, luxury hotel to return to in the evenings. The singers live in tiny concrete rooms, probably very damp and cold, so I would have been ashamed to complain about conditions that they are forced to live in their whole lives.

After the "audition," the directors of the Opera invited me to a meeting and asked me to analyze each singer's capabilities. Several worried them, and there was talk of letting some of them go. These kinds of things happen in opera companies all over the world. Although my speech was very halting, I was able to understand enough of the meeting to realize that some of their participation was in danger. I told the directors that learning the opera, especially in French, was very difficult and that it was too early to fire anyone! After the meeting I told Zhang Jie-Min that I would refuse to start over with other singers, that there wasn't time...and that it was dangerous to have fewer cast members, in case anyone became ill at the last minute. Whether my opinion mattered or not always remained a mystery to me; however, everyone was kept in my study program, much to my relief.

It was quite exciting to be in Shanghai for Chinese New Year...this time the Year of the Ox. We had a lovely Chinese New Year party one morning at the Opera. One of the administrators came in during my lessons with the Carmens and invited me to attend. He was so gracious that I couldn't say no, and it would have been a mistake to refuse. They had set up long tables scattered with roasted watermelon seeds, tangerines, peanuts and little Chinese sweets, mostly preserved cherries and prunes. We had plastic cups of tea as well. They held drawings for little prizes, and had me draw the first twelve names and give out the prizes, which were wooden necklaces. Some of the people got up and sang or danced, then they asked me to! So I sang "Auld Lang Syne," with Zhang Jie-Min at my side to give me courage. To my surprise, they knew the tune, so they sang along with me, in Chinese, of course! It is apparently the theme song from a movie that everyone has seen.

All over town there were big stacks of boxes of wine and beer, and large boxes of tangerines for sale. They come individually wrapped in orange paper and are delicious. It was a challenge to eat the grapefruit there, which are gigantic. I had to ask for help to get the skin off, as it is very thick. Inside they are very sweet, but not tender and juicy like our small ones. I would say that they are as large as a small round watermelon.

Strings of lights, firecrackers, lanterns and scrolls were for sale, as well as clothing. During our week off for New Year, the Opera officials invited me to a delicious lunch in a restaurant. We had a selection of dishes from many parts of China, all served on a lazy susan. Other than rice and soup, it would be unheard of to have individual plates of food in China--this would be considered rude and selfish. During the meal, Zhang Jie-Min told a story about a friend of hers who went to Germany and ordered duck in a restaurant, and how astonished he was when they served a whole duck to each person at the table. The Chinese laughed so hard at this story that I couldn't help joining them. They think our idea of having everything on individual plates is totally absurd!

The following day, Wei Song (Don José) and his wife invited me to their home for a traditional family event--biao jiao ze--making Chinese dumplings! His wife had made the dough and we all participated in wrapping it around the meat stuffing. While we were waiting for the dumplings to boil, they put out lots of snacks on the table: seeds, nuts, candied walnuts, etc. We ate the dumplings along with several cold dishes: fish, meat, and vegetables. There were also watermelon seeds and pine nuts, and beer or orange soda to drink.

Looking at Shanghai from my 18th floor room of the Jin Jiang Tower Hotel, it seemed bleak and dreary, with massive pollution obscuring the sun, and below, a huge collection of high rise buildings seemingly scattered at random. However, emerge on the street level, and everything is colorful and alive, and the people are very energetic. When I think of the city now, I remember lots of laundry hanging from every possible location, and bicycles everywhere--parked on the sidewalks, thick in the streets. The riders wear brightly colored ponchos in the rain and they look like fabulous rainbow birds gliding along the street. They use bicycles to carry everything--huge baskets of vegetables (and I do mean huge), or numerous cases of wine and beer. I thought I had seen everything imaginable attached to a bicycle, then one day I saw one carrying an upright piano!

I walked to work every day--taking about 20 minutes. I saw people sitting on stools in the street eating breakfasts of rice rolls, soup, dumplings, and drinking the obligatory tea. Men on chairs were gathered around overturned cardboard boxes playing cards, old ladies tottered down the street to empty the chamber pots of the previous night, barber and bicycle repair stands were set up on every sidewalk, old people stood outside doing morning exercises, men sold hamsters in little bamboo cages-- and next to that, were Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonald's, new luxury hotels with private gardens, and shopping centers with the finest Parisian products--quite empty! Who can afford them? Sometimes at night I would walk along the Bund, the famous old waterfront area with gorgeous, European-style buildings that managed to survive the Cultural Revolution. A stop at the Peace Hotel to hear the old mens' jazz band was obligatory...the story is that they got together and kept practicing in secret, even though that form of music was forbidden under Mao Tse-Tung's regime.

No one talked very much to me about politics until Deng Xiao-Ping died during my stay. Then I was able to hear many opinions and comparisons of him to Mao. It was quite fascinating. There was some question as to whether we should have a rehearsal on the day of Deng's official funeral. The singers wanted to keep working since we had lost some time during the New Year celebrations, but the Opera officials didn't want us to. I told them that I would be there for whomever wanted to work. When I arrived at the Opera, there was a large photo of Deng draped in black. I wore a dark suit that day to show that I was aware of the importance of the moment. All of the singers came to the rehearsal, but I asked them not to sing, feeling that it would shock the Opera administration. Instead, we worked on reciting the text. When I left the opera a few hours later, the photo of Deng had been removed and everything was back to normal.

Spring arrived. We had worked for several months and the time of my stay was drawing to a close. Due to my schedule at the Bastille Opera, I was not able to stay for the staging rehearsals of Carmen. I hated to leave all of my Chinese friends. Our last day of rehearsal turned into an extravaganza with the chorus and all of the singers performing a concert version of the entire opera for the Cultural Ministry representatives and some of the sponsors. There was TV and radio coverage. The artists were very nervous, but did quite well. Several of the singers gave me lovely gifts and we took many photos outside in the adjoining garden. A few days later, it was time to leave Shanghai. When I arrived, very early, at the Shanghai airport, some of the singers were there to see me off, bringing a large, beautifully carved jade flower, a gift of He Zhao-Hua, the Opera administrator.

Chan Bonko invited me back to Shanghai many weeks later to see the last two performances of Carmen, one of which took place in the presence of Madame Jacques Chirac! I saw French director Antoine Bourseiller's classical staging, and heard Yu Long's spirited, virtuosic conducting as well as Zhang Jie-Min's operatic conducting debut. The "A" cast included two fine foreign artists, Warren Mok as Don José and Hermine May as Carmen. There was also a "B" cast, but unfortunately, not a "C" cast, so several of my artists did not have a chance to perform, after all of their hard work on the parts. All I could do was hope that the experience of studying could in some small way compensate them for this bitter disappointment.

In spite of the civil war, the political "problems" that, from our Western perspective, we really can't understand--in spite of those exterior horrors that the 20th century has brought to China, the people seem to retain what I would have imagined as the "poetry" associated with ancient China. Their beautiful manners, gentle natures, sense of humor, ability to work hard and long hours, all attest to a people of the highest level of culture. I have limitless admiration for them and feel fortunate to have shared two seasons in their midst. They taught me, and the memory of them continues to teach me, what it is to be a fine human being.

I'd like to share the English translation from a little package of chrysanthemum tea leaves that one of my Escamillos, Zhao Jian-Hong, gave me one rainy afternoon at the opera house. It sums up for me what I like to remember from China--a beautiful sense of poetry and harmony with life.

"Chrysanthemum is grown in spring; luxurian in summer; blossom in autumn; fruits in winter, absorbbed season's spirits, getting dew and frosty, leaves and flowers cannot be fallen down when they are withered, undried up, taste sweetness and bitterness, nature, peace...ancient time people think as gentlemen, farmer's gods live as wonderfull things, supernature being talk as super ones, tales saying short men become gods after drinking them, jinghouji saying huk wang after drinking its pool water, being long illness, become old ages man, chrysanthemum's such valuables flowers, does it not as the same group as others!"

This article is dedicated to my "flowers": the Chinese cast of Carmen: