Close to the Bone

At first glance, The Bonesetter's Daughter seems unlikely source material for an opera. Amy Tan's 2001 novel spans two continents and three generations, encompassing contemporary American life, ancient Chinese myth, ghost stories, family secrets, and the search for personal identity. How does a composer translate such a story from the page to the stage? Cooler heads might have said it couldn't be done. Yet for composer Stewart Wallace, inspiration trumped practical concerns. Reading Tan's novel, he says, left him no choice. "I read it," explains Wallace, "and said, 'This is an opera.'"

Now, seven years after the book was published, The Bonesetter's Daughter is indeed an opera. Composed by Wallace, with a libretto by Tan, the new work will be premiered on September 13, in a San Francisco Opera production at the War Memorial Opera House, where it plays for seven performances through October 3. A co-commission by the San Francisco and Dallas opera companies, it features an international cast directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and conducted by Steven Sloane. Multiple ancillary events accompany this highly anticipated premiere, including the release of Ken Smith's book Fate! Luck! Chance! Creating the Opera of the Bonesetter's Daughter (Chronicle Books); the filming of a documentary scheduled for release on public television next year; and lectures, panel discussions, and preshow talks at the opera house and throughout the Bay Area.

Ghostwriter Haunted by Ghosts

The Bonesetter's Daughter tells the story of Ruth Young, a successful but troubled San Francisco–based ghostwriter of self-help books. Spurred by questions posed by her ailing mother, LuLing, and escorted by the ghost of her grandmother, whom she calls Precious Auntie, Ruth travels to China to uncover long-buried truths about her ancestors and herself.

Wallace, who is best-known for the opera Harvey Milk (produced by S.F. Opera in 1996), admits that Tan's novel posed an enormous challenge. "If you look at it structurally, it's not a natural for an opera," the composer said in a recent interview. "It's a huge story, a huge canvas." It was also irresistible, says the Philadelphia-born, Texas-raised composer. "There were a few things that really resonated for me, the first of which was the idea that things that happen to your family in the past affect you whether you know about them or not," says Wallace. "This was very much like Harvey Milk for me, this idea of the things that we carry with us in our bones, in our genes, in our collective memory. It's a powerful operatic idea, and a very musical one. And then there was that ghost." Wallace and Tan had been friends for nearly a decade when The Bonesetter's Daughter was published. They met in the early '90s at Yaddo, an artists' colony in upstate New York. When the novel was released in 2001, Wallace composed a short piece to celebrate both the book and Tan's 50th birthday.

Handing Off From Novelist to Librettist

That piece became the genesis of the opera, though the original plan was that Tan, who had never written a libretto, would collaborate on the adaptation with Wallace's Harvey Milk librettist, Michael Korie. When Korie got tied up with other projects — including the Ricky Ian Gordon opera, The Grapes of Wrath — Wallace and Tan simply forged ahead. "Amy kept saying, 'I don't know what to do,'" recalls Wallace. "And I said, 'Let's just try it.' We started with the Prologue, because we knew it would be these three women. "Amy sent me what she called 'notes,'" he adds with a laugh. "I thought it was 'a scene.' It was amazingly specific — trio, solo, trio, six pages of wall-to-wall text. I went through it and kept the structure, and just cherry-picked until it was two pages of lean column."

Calligraphy by Patrick P. Lee

Wallace says he was "blown away" by Tan's nascent skill as a librettist, and found that they worked extremely well together. "I discovered that we shared a lot of similar approaches. In her books she'll take a small phrase that's kind of tossed off in the beginning. She'll slowly turn it like a screwdriver. By the end, it's something very significant. That works the same way a musical cell will work, the way you use it in variation, repeat it, or put it in a different context. So we were using a lot of the same techniques in our different worlds." Wallace credits Tan for her willingness to refashion the novel into an entirely new work. The story has undergone numerous changes; for example, LuLing, who is still alive at the end of the novel, dies in the opera. Characters were jettisoned, plot points rearranged. "Amy has been extremely free about changing details of the story," says the composer. "What she was absolutely firm on was keeping to the emotional truth."

Opening Eyes and Ears in China

According to Wallace, the project coalesced when he and Tan traveled to China, the first of four trips they took together while working on the opera. Wallace attended traditional Chinese kunju opera performances, sat in on village funerals, met with prominent Chinese musicians, and, according to the composer, "opened my very American ears."

Photo by Ken Smith

A pivotal moment came at a funeral, where the music consisted of two suonas (a double-reed instrument similar to an oboe) and four percussion instruments. "It's a funeral, but it's like a celebration," Wallace remembers. "I heard this music, and I felt like my head would explode. It felt very intuitive, or serendipitous, and it was very exciting." He began studying with master percussionist Li Zhonghua, leader of the Beijing Opera percussion section, and eventually asked that the Chinese musicians participate in the opera's premiere.

Photo by Ken Smith

The orchestra for the San Francisco performances will include approximately 85 musicians, plus the same instruments he heard that day — two suonas, and four percussion instruments played by Beijing Opera musicians led by Li. The latter instruments, says Wallace, "carry the emotion of the opera." That said, Wallace insists that his goal was not to write a Chinese opera. "My objective was to write something in my own language that felt like China," he says. "I'm not Chinese, I'm not trying to be Chinese. I didn't try to do Chinese melodic lines, Chinese harmonies, or Chinese modes. What I really was thinking about was timbre, textures, space. Things that we don't have any equivalent to." Steven Sloane, who has conducted Wallace premieres, including the composer's Percussion Concerto (written for Evelyn Glennie), says that the Bonesetter's score represents a unique hybrid. "There are quite a few contemporary composers, including Tan Dun, who have used Chinese instruments in their compositions," says Sloane. "But they've used them in a more characteristic way, where they represent another world. Stewart's intention is really to create a synthesis between these instruments and Western instruments."

Interviewed after a week of rehearsals with the San Francisco Opera orchestra, Sloane expressed high praise for the ensemble. "What an orchestra!" raved the conductor. "In my career, I've had the opportunity to do quite a few new pieces. The openness of this orchestra, the technical ability, and the attitude — I just can't say enough about them. What a jewel this city has in this orchestra." Wallace agrees: "In a way, they play like chamber musicians. When I was here for Harvey Milk, their playing was so beautiful. This time, even though we had this big palette, I really wanted to let the character of each part of the orchestra come through. There's a lot of soloistic writing in this piece. There are Big Moments, but there's also a lot of intimate writing. I wanted them to play in a way that was expressive. I always think of Harvey Milk as sort of a 'wall of sound' piece — more Phil Spector [the noted recordings producer]. This is more like chamber music." For Sloane, the Chinese instruments lend the opera a fantastic dimension. "This is a first for me," says the conductor. "The exotic nature of these instruments is still a surprise, every time they play."

Dual Roles, Double the Experiences

The San Francisco cast also represents an unusual conjoining of Eastern and Western traditions. Mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao, who sings the dual role of Ruth and Young LuLing, is a native of China who lives in the Bay Area; mezzo Ning Liang, cast as old LuLing, was the first Chinese singer ever to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Qian Yi (Precious Auntie), known throughout China as a kunju opera star, made her U.S. debut at Lincoln Center in 1999 in the Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion, a production that was staged to great acclaim by Chen Shi-Zheng, who is directing The Bonesetter's Daughter.

Zheng Cao, who has sung numerous roles with San Francisco Opera — most recently, Suzuki in last fall's revival of Madama Butterfly — loved Tan's book, and feels a deep connection with the character of Ruth. "I can certainly relate to her," she says. "When I came to this country, I also discovered cultural gaps, and I understand how hard those gaps can be. It's complicated to work things out, to understand how heritage and culture and relationships fit together." Zheng Cao, who has probably sung more Suzukis than she can count, and has earned consistent critical praise for her nuanced portrayal of the character, says it's nice to be cast as a Chinese-American, in a role written for her. "It's like the old days, having a composer writing for your voice," she says. "It's a real blessing."

Director Chen Shi-Zheng, a native of Hunan province who is now based in New York, also connected with the story in a personal way. "San Francisco is where the first Chinese immigrants came," says Chen. "And I thought this story, of escaping China and coming here and finding a kind of identity crisis, was quite interesting. Most of Amy's work is about trying to find personal identity in this whole transmigration. For myself, I was a new immigrant the first time I came to this country 20 years ago, so I wanted to find my own way to depict these things — the myth and drama of China, the humor of the modern American setting, and the misunderstandings between these cultures." The bottom line for Chen was the opera's complexity. "I always like things that have a little bit of dimension," says the director. "It's not like La Bohème." Chen notes that Chinese acrobats will function as the production's Greek chorus. "They're part of the fabric of the opera. They're flying, they're dancing, they form the images and the energy to accompany the music. American and European opera is very voice-driven; this is a very image-driven, physical kind of performance. It's a different way of telling the story that doesn't fall into the American or European tradition at all." As opening night approaches, it's left to audiences to decide whether The Bonesetter's Daughter represents a new kind of tradition. Yet, on the day we spoke, Wallace was clearly pleased with the work he and Tan have created. "In a way, this is an only-in-America kind of piece," says Wallace. "Amy and I have our American perspective, and the others have this kind of Chinese perspective on America. Together we make a whole. I think a Chinese audience would listen to the opera and think, 'I know those sounds, this is very American.' An American audience will sit here and think, 'It sounds so Chinese.' That's really the spirit of the piece itself."