From the time Long Yu became music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in 2009, he knew what he wanted for his organization. 鈥淚鈥檇 always commissioned Chinese composers for the international stage,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut for my hometown, I wanted stories鈥攏ot just Chinese stories, but parts of Shanghai that represent the big stories of our time.鈥�
A chance encounter鈥攁 couple of encounters, really鈥攍ed him to award-winning songwriter and film composer Aaron Zigman: first, at the home of Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen after Zigman had scored Jiang鈥檚 2016 film Hidden Man; second, when pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who鈥檇 played on Zigman鈥檚 soundtrack to Wakefield, was looking to commission a piano concerto. Yu became the lead commissioner of Zigman鈥檚 Tango manos; after the concerto鈥檚 world premiere at the 2019 Beijing Music Festival the conductor broached the subject of a Shanghai project.
Zigman knew exactly the story he wanted to tell. At age 22, the budding composer met the pop artist Peter Max, who鈥檇 fled Nazi Germany with his parents in 1939 to settle in Shanghai, then the only city still open to tens of thousands of Jewish refugees. Although Zigman had been a history major with a focus on the Holocaust, he鈥檇 never before encountered that chapter.
鈥淧eter told me a lot about his Shanghai experience,鈥� Zigman recalls. 鈥淭hat was where he was first inspired to become an artist. After Long put this idea in my head, I couldn鈥檛 turn the project down."
Zigman immersed himself in research and in a few months came up with a 20-page pitch deck resembling a screenplay treatment. 鈥淚 decided to play down the politics and came up with a multicultural love story,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat offered room for both Asian and Eastern European influences, as well as a place for both cultures to join together.鈥�
脡尘颈驳谤茅 follows the Shanghai arrival of two Jewish brothers: one a rabbinical student, the other a doctor. The first lands at a local Yeshiva (Shanghai had a notable Russian Jewish presence even before the 1917 Russian Revolution), the second stumbles into a Chinese medicine shop. Both find love, with the patriarchs of both the Jewish and Chinese communities predictably resistant.
Zigman looked to musicals as well as 19th-century opera for inspiration. Working with Pulitzer Prize鈥� and Grammy Award鈥搘inning librettist Mark Campbell as lyricist, as well as longtime pop lyricist Brock Walsh (with Campbell contributing most of the lyrics and Walsh writing words to fit Zigman鈥檚 song meter), the composer incorporated a variety of musical styles largely appropriate to Shanghai鈥檚 history.
鈥淪hanghai was the only music city in the Far East,鈥� says Yu, whose grandfather, the composer Ding Shande, was a Shanghai Conservatory professor in the late 1930s. 鈥淎t least 50 percent of the Shanghai Symphony was Jewish. And, compared to Hong Kong or Taipei, Shanghai was the only city where you could find so many elements 鈥� Chinese music, French music, jazz. Aaron knows all those styles. He writes very enjoyable music, and it tells a powerful story."
脡尘颈驳谤茅鈥檚 world premiere in Shanghai, in November, eschewed staging or visuals. The New York Philharmonic鈥檚 performances鈥擣ebruary 29 and March 1, presented by Linda and Mitch Hart, which mark the work鈥檚 US Premiere鈥攚ill be staged by opera director Mary Birnbaum, conducted by Yu, and include both costumes and visual projections to help illustrate the characters and their backgrounds.
鈥淲e want our projection design to show Shanghai through various lenses,鈥� Birnbaum explains. One character (reflecting Peter Max鈥檚 visual style) sees the city as a romantic adventure. Another has 鈥渁 1930s Chinese cinema lens filtering Parisian art nouveau, back when Shanghai was the 鈥楶aris of the East,鈥� 鈥� the director adds. Yet another sees danger through historic war footage. 鈥淯ltimately, we see this story as a contemporary vigil for those who find themselves far away from home,鈥� she says, summing it up: 鈥淲e want to tell the story of a time when one culture provided safe haven for another.鈥�
