Jeffrey Ching's opera to be staged in Germany

Jeffrey Ching’s “The Orphan”, a two-act opera in six scenes, will open on Nov. 29 for six performances in Erfurt, Germany. Commissioned by the Erfurt Theater, the opera will be directed by Jacob Peters Messer.

Ching’s libretto, which reflects his incredibly esoteric, diverse and erudite background, is drawn (in historical order) from Sima Quian, Liu Xiang, Ji Junxiang (the Chinese authors either transliterated according to their archaic pronunciation or translated by the composer into English), and from, hold your breath, Pietro Metastasio, Voltaire, Arthur Murphy, Tomas de Yriarte, a certain student named Friedrichs, Goethe and Sir Walter H. Medhurst.

The cast consists of singers, speaker, mimes, chorus and dancers.

The events are supposed to have occurred in the duchy of Jin in Zhou (now the province of Shanxi) during the early 16th century B.C.

There are at least seven languages in the opera: Early Zhou Chinese of the pre-Christian era, Yuan Mandarin of the 14th century, and the literary Italian, French, English, Spanish and German of the 18th century. Each role has an assigned language, to which it adheres strictly in its solo music. However, all conversational recitative between the characters is sung in Yuan Mandarin, the lingua franca. The only exception is the arch-villain who never departs from Early Zhou Chinese.

The 14th century Chinese play also specifies the melodies to which the verses were supposed to be sung, and in a great many instances their musical notation has come down to us. Almost the entire opera is based on this 700-year old material, used (however greatly metamorphosed) in the same dramatic contexts determined by the 14th-century playwright.

As each other character has his national language, so each scene has its musical nationality, derived from the idioms broadly contemporary with the reception of Chinese ideas in Europe.

Ching’s distinctive musical language owes much to the diversity of his cultural background and education. He was born to a Chinese-Filipino Buddhist family in Manila, and received a Catholic education at a Jesuit school while growing up next door to his grandfather’s private museum of ancient Chinese scrolls (now on permanent display in the Shanghai Museum).

He began composing before he was ten and remained self-taught until the age of 17, when his first opera Rendezvous in Venice was premiered. He went to the US to study music and Sinology at Harvard U, there receiving the John Harvard Scholarship for “academic achievements of the highest distinction” twice, and the Harvard Detur Prize, the university’s oldest prize for academic excellence. He graduated with a double magna cum laude, submitting a graduation thesis on the sumptuary laws of the Ming dynasty based on extensive research into primary sources.

He read law, philosophy and composition at Cambridge and London Universities. For several years he taught music at London U and was Lecturer-in-Music there from 1987 to 1991. He now resides mostly in Berlin with his wife, the Spanish-Philippine soprano Andion Fernandez for whom the vocal parts in his principal works were created.

Andion, member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, will portray the lead in “The Orphan”.

The incredibly prolific Ching brings his work list to about 270 compositions, now concentrated into a few major pieces, each meticulously planned and executed every one or two years. These include the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies (Souvenir des Ming and Kunstkammer), Notas para una cartografia de Filipinas, Ayres for Fallen Kings and “The Orphan” (Das Weisenkind).

World premieres for 2010 include Concerto da camara for guitar, cello, soprano and strings, and a new chamber work for the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Director Messer, while completing his studies in opera production, was immediately engaged by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Other engagements all over Europe and the US followed. His pre-classic and modern music productions include works ranging from Telemann, Salieri, Cavalli, Handel, Mazzocchi to Bach under renowned conductors.

Messer has established himself with a wide operatic repertoire from Mozart to Wagner, Shostakovich and Stravinsky.