Adapted from the music The Phantom of the Opera, the show The Phantom of The Cabaret - Sir Kuei was Ko Tsung-ming’s grand work for the establishment of the Tang Mei Yun Taiwanese Opera Company in 1998. The show was subsequently reinvented by Shi Ru-fang and renamed as Who is my Bride? in 2006 in an ...Read more
Adapted from the music The Phantom of the Opera, the show The Phantom of The Cabaret - Sir Kuei was Ko Tsung-ming’s grand work for the establishment of the Tang Mei Yun Taiwanese Opera Company in 1998. The show was subsequently reinvented by Shi Ru-fang and renamed as Who is my Bride? in 2006 in an attempt to produce an elegy about human relations overflowing with oriental humanistic features.
Starting with the rousing and arresting love romance between deities and human beings in Chieh Yuan’s “Chiu Ko ”, the screenwriter, Shi Ru-fang, further inserted the Chinese people’s strong and intimate family relationships into the show to depict Sir Kuei, a phantom at a cabaret. The distorted soul of Sir Kuei and his incapability of developing genuine relationships with others result from his resentment at being abandoned by his biological parents when he was an infant.For the cabaret diva, Yun Ying, Sir Kuei was a “god” at the cabaret whom she desired to see, but her request was denied once upon a time. However, the diva shouts out “ghost” when Sir Kuei plans to treat her with his genuine heart and disclose his deformed appearance to her. When Sir Kuei strong-arms Yun Ying into marrying him and confesses his story to her, Yun Ying finally learns that Sir Kuei is nothing but an ill-fated “person” rejected by the God of Fortune.
Tang Mei-yun, who was the artistic director and the leading performer of sheng(old and young male characters) in the troupe, played the male protagonist Sir Kuei. Using her magnetic voice and varied singing techniques, Tang Mei-yun successfully interpreted Sir Kuei’s state of mind in different phases. The actress Hsiao Mi, who typically played a chou(comic characters) or a character with a perverse disposition in her previous performances, played a righteous, gentle, and simple young scholar in this show. Wan Fang, a pop singer with a fine voice and excellent singing skills, was invited to participate in the feast and to play a girl who is fascinated by the phantom’s story and is here reborn with a flair for superb Taiwanese opera singing.
Category | Xiqu(Traditional Opera) |
Type | Taiwanese Opera |
Chinese Title | 梨園天神桂郎君 |
Group | Tang Mei Yun Taiwanese Opera Company |
Subtitle | Mandarin Chinese |
Premiere | 2016-04-14 |
Venue | National Theater,Taipei |
Duration | 160min |
Image Source | |
Other Works | Love and Pregnancy The Symphony of Fate The Immortal Lovers Deathless Beauty |