Another Country Heard From, Part 2
In Part 1, we looked at several fantastical works about China. Still others, however, allude to real-life people, and are a lesson in what can be spun from even a small piece of history.
Take L'Eroe Cinese ("The Chinese Hero"), for example. The 18th-century Metastasio libretto for this was so popular as to have been scored for opera by almost 20 then-contemporary composers such as Cimarosa. Much less convoluted than Il Trovatore, whose plot also rests upon swapped babies, it concerns Svengango, son of an exiled Chinese emperor. He has been brought up to think he is a commoner, the child of Leango, the Prime Minister (who had wrapped his own infant in Svengango's garments and left him for the angry mob to find). Svengango loves Lisinga, a Tatar princess whose father has promised her to the true heir to the Chinese throne. Leango feels it is time to restore Svangango to his heritage. Who crops up but Minteo, Leango's very-much-alive lost son, who had been rescued by an old man who -- having noted the royal baby clothes -- had reared him to believe that he, Minteo, was the heir to the throne. Eventually, who's who is sorted out and Lisinga is of course allowed to marry Svengango. As western as the story seems -- it might well have been written by Perrault, and set in some mythical European kingdom...or by Feydeau, come to think of it -- Metastasio did in fact base it upon a historical account of a genuine baby-swap that had occurred in China: during the Third Dynasty, the son of an emperor was indeed saved from rioters by the substitution by the Prime Minister of his own child.
Lehár's 1929 Das Land des Lächelns ("The Land of Smiles") was the composer's reworking of another, failed operetta with an Asian theme, the 1923 Die Gelbe Jacke ("The Yellow Jacket") inspired by a real-life incident involving a Chinese attaché stationed in Vienna. Act I is set in Vienna of 1912, where a young Austrian aristocrat, Lisa, is wooed by a visiting young Chinese prince, Sou-Chong. Despite their language difficulties, they fall in love. Although his culture demands he present a more inscrutable face to the world ("Immer nur lächeln"), he passionately serenades Lisa with an aria derived from Chinese poetry ("Von Apfelblüten einen Kranz"). When he is called back to China, Lisa accompanies him as his wife. Once in Peking, though, Sou-Chong reverts to Chinese ways, including the wearing of an imperial yellow jacket...and his uncle begins to pressure him to take additional wives, as was traditional for mandarins. Lisa is disturbed by how much he has changed, and finds palace life perplexing. Who should appear but an old Viennese suitor, Gustl, sent to China as a military attaché. He instantly falls in love with Mi, Sou-Ching's sister...but soon realizes that the cultural gulf between them is too great, and he and Lisa attempt to flee the palace. Sou-Chong discovers the plot and, under Chinese law, has the right to kill his presumably unfaithful wife. However, he still loves her, and instead allows the Austrians to complete their escape, mourning that the inscrutability of his upbringing has cost him his only happiness.
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