УДК 82

The Oriental Princess who came from the West: the prototype, evolution and cross-cultural transformation

Шапиро Роман Георгиевич – кандидат филологических наук, доцент факультета Русского языка Института иностранных языков и международных отношений Университета Чжэнчжоу (Китай).

Abstract: In the 18th-century Europe China was often used as an exotic background for comedy. Lesage (libretto) and d’Ornevale (music) based their comic opera The Chinese Princess (1725) on a story from the Persian fairy-tale collection Thousand and One Days by Petis Delacroix. The specific plot was taken from Nizami’s epic The Seven Beauties. Riddles offered by a bride to a bridegroom and the execution of those who fail the test are typical motives of the world folklore. The opera used only the central part of Petis’ story.

Carlo Gozzi took the plot of his fiaba Princess Turandot (1761) either from Lesage’s opera or from Petis’ collection. Gozzi’s plot and characters are more complicated, and the stress is put on moral instruction rather than on entertainment. Schiller’s German translation (1801) deletes some comic scenes and makes the whole play into a poetic psychological tragedy. Puccini’s opera (1926) adds some authenticity to the story, as he uses eight genuine Chinese melodies for his themes.

The opera was frowned upon in the PRC before the late 1990s because it ‘unfavourably portrayed a Chinese princess’. However an opulent performance was staged by Zubin Mehta and Zhang Yimou at the Forbidden City in 1998. A series of other performances emphasising Chinese culture were staged in Taiwan, Mainland China and all over the world.

The paper will also give an overview of modern adaptations of Turandot's story in traditional Chinese genres.

Аннотация: В Европе 18 века Китай часто использовался как экзотический фон для комедии. В основу своей комической оперы «Китайская принцесса» (1725) Лесаж (либретто) и д'Орнваль (музыка) положили рассказ из сборника персидских сказок « Тысяча и один день» Пети Делакруа. Конкретный сюжет взят из эпоса Низами «Семь красавиц» . Загадки, загадываемые невестой жениху, и казнь не выдержавших испытания - типичные мотивы мирового фольклора. В опере использована только центральная часть рассказа Пети.

Карло Гоцци взял сюжет своей фиабы « Принцесса Турандот» (1761 г.) либо из оперы Лесажа, либо из собрания Пети. Сюжет и персонажи Гоцци сложнее, и упор делается на моральное наставление, а не на развлечение. Немецкий перевод Шиллера (1801 г.) исключает некоторые комические сцены и превращает всю пьесу в поэтическую психологическую трагедию. Опера Пуччини (1926) добавляет правдивости рассказу, поскольку он использует восемь настоящих китайских мелодий для своих тем.

Опера не одобрялась в КНР до конца 1990-х годов, потому что в ней «неблагоприятно изображалась китайская принцесса». Однако в 1998 году в Запретном городе Зубин Мета и Чжан Имоу поставили роскошный спектакль. Ряд других спектаклей, посвященных китайской культуре, был поставлен на Тайване, в материковом Китае и во всем мире.

В статье также будет представлен обзор современных экранизаций повести Турандот в традиционных китайских жанрах.

Keywords: China-Europe contacts, fairy-tale, opera, Chinese opera, Turandot

Ключевые слова: китайско - европейские контакты, сказка, опера, китайская опера, Турандот.

Despite the great interest of contemporary researchers in Chinese music, its reflection in European music has been understudied. This paper will consider the example of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot - one of the first cases of using authentic Chinese tunes and instruments in European music. The value of Turandot in this sense is confirmed by a considerable number of its productions in modern China (after more than half a century of unofficial prohibition), both in the original form and with various alterations: with a new musical finale completed by a Chinese composer, with additional ballet numbers, etc.

Although Turandot is a Chinese princess, the plot about her is Turkic rather than Chinese. Similar stories are found for the first time in The Seven Beauties (1197) [4] by Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209). The Persian poem consists of a prologue, seven fairy tales and an epilogue and speaks about the Sasanian king Bahram who, after saving his country from the Chinese invaders, takes seven princesses in marriage. Each of them tells the king a tale when he comes to spend the night in her palace.

The second fairy tale, How Bahram Sat on a Sunday in the Yellow Dome, describes the king of Iraq, who has not been able to choose his wife for a long time, because all the brides are too arrogant. Finally he buys a Turkic-Chinese princess (at that time the western Chinese territories were under the rule of the Turks). She has many virtues and is obedient, but nevertheless does not accept his love. The princess confesses to the king that all her grandmothers and great-grandmothers died at childbirth, so she prefers to remain a virgin. This moment anticipates Puccini's motif of Turandot's revenge for her great-grandmother Lou Lin, who died after she was abused by a man. The king of Iraq follows the advice of a witch: he spends the night with another concubine, so that the Chinese woman becomes jealous, and eventually she shares his love.

The fourth fairy tale, How Bahram Sat on a Tuesday in the Red Dome, is about a Russian (or Slavic) princess. She is said to be "in form a woman, but in essence, man". She does not want to get married, because she values freedom (which resembles Schillers' Turandot, see below). The princess hides in the castle, surrounds it with sophisticated death traps, paints her own portrait and issues a decree that she will marry only someone who unravels all her tricks and penetrates the castle. Many enamoured princes perish, however there comes a wise and brave knight: 

“[He,] like a mountain firm stood fast, shattered one by one the talismans; the fortress breached, and shrank from no condition set”.

Then the princess proposes to the groom four Sufi-style riddles, in the course of solving which they exchange pearls, precious stones and rings – symbols of their wisdom and mutual love. They get married, making the princess's father happy. The tale has several motifs that are present in subsequent versions of the story, in particular in Puccini's opera: the extraordinary wisdom of the princess; the decree that the bridegroom who has not solved the riddle will die; princes falling in love with the portrait; the father, who wants his daughter to be married.

An additional source of Turandot's story can be found in the biography of the Turkic-Mongolian princess Khutulun (the Turkic version of the name being Ay Yaruq, 1260-1306), which is described in the book of Marco Polo [8], as well as in Islamic sources [6]. Khutulun was famous for her military valour and strength and fought the Chinese-Mongolian Yuan dynasty in the territories now belonging to Western Mongolia, Western China, Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan. Khutulun said that she would marry only the man who would defeat her in close combat. The loser had to give her a herd of a thousand horses. No one could defeat her, and as a result she married a man of her own choice without fighting him.

The next stage in the development of the plot about Turandot is the fairy tale Prince Calaf and the Chinese Princess from the collection A Thousand and One Day (1710-1712) [5] compiled by the French orientalist François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713). Due to a number of important coincidences it can be argued that the tale is genetically related to Nizami's poem, although we do not know whether he was familiar with it directly. Pétis de la Croix himself writes that he based his work on a Persian manuscript presented to him by a dervish during his travels in the Middle East [5:4]. Pétis de la Croix could also be influenced by the story of Khutulun (he could have known both Marco Polo's book and Islamic chronicles, and he worked on the history of the Mongols), but there is no decisive information on the subject, and the plot similarity is less obvious.

The fairy tale Prince Calaf and the Chinese Princess served as the direct source of subsequent versions of the story in Europe: we find here for the first time the Tartar Prince Calaf, his father Timourtache (later "Timur"), the Chinese princess Turandot (Farsi for "daughter of Turan" which once again speaks of the Central Asian origin of the heroine), her father Emperor Altoum-Khan (whose most likely prototype is the Mongolian Altyn Khan who lived in the 17th century), the maid Adelma, Beijing as the place of action, the execution of the unsuccessful suitors (unlike their death in traps related by Nizami), and the necessity for the princess to guess the name of the prince. 

The Chinese Princess (1731) by A.-R. Lesage and J.-F. D'Orneval is the first work about Turandot on stage in general and in musical theatre in particular. It is a comic opera with dramatic dialogues in prose, arias in verse and dances. The opera was published in the form of a libretto with instructions to which popular melody the lyrics should be sung, there is no sheet music [3]. The names of the characters are changed (Princess Diamantine, Prince Noureddine), the plot is considerably simpler: the prince's name is not guessed, and the princess makes sure the riddles are simple, since she likes her suitor. At the same time the opera introduces comic masks Pierrot, Scaramouche and Harlequin, who later appear in the works of Gozzi, Schiller and (in a modified form) Puccini. It also includes the elements of European "chinoiserie": colao (the European term for the Chinese prime minister), Mandarins with bells, and war with Japan.

Carlo Gozzi's fiaba (a fairy tale or fantasy with commedia dell’arte masks) Turandot (1761) [2] retains the second part of the story, as well as the characters' names, from The Thousand and One Days, with the additional Venetian masks of Truffaldino (the head of the eunuchs), Brighella (the chief of the pages), Pantalone (the secretary of Altoume), Tartaglia (the great chancellor). The play is written in the Venetian dialect in the commedia dell'arte style implying improvisation by the actors. One of the riddles speaks about Venice. Gozzi is the first to talk about the war of the sexes and reconciliation in love, which is an important theme of Puccini's opera. Gozzi's tale was the source of several XIX century operas: Turandot, Singspiel nach Gozzi by Franz Danzi (1816), Turanda by A. Bazzini (Bazzini was one of Puccini’s teachers at the Conservatoire of Milan) (1867), and Turandot  by T. Rebaum (1888). 

Schiller's play Turandot, Princess of China (1801) is the next stage in the development of the Turandot story towards Puccini's opera. It follows Gozzi's tale closely, albeit with minor differences: the commedia dell'arte characters are more realistic but less humorous, and are not supposed to improvise. The play explains Turandot's hatred for men:

Young prince, I clearly recognise your worth.
Be wise in time. Relinquish your attempt.
Too arduous is the trial. Do not tempt
The Fates. I am not cruel, as they say,
But shun the yoke of Man's despotic sway.
In virgin freedom would I live and die;
The meanest hind may claim this boon,–shall I,
The daughter of an emperor, not have
That birthright which belongs to all? Be slave
To brutish force, that makes your sex our lord?
Why does my hand such tempting bait afford?
The gods have made me beauteous, rich, and wise,
Presumptuous man considers me his prize.
If nature dowered me with bounteous treasure
You tyrants think 'twas all to serve your pleasure.
Why should my person, throne, and wealth be booty
To one harsh, jealous master? No, all beauty
Is heaven's gift, and like the sun, should shine
To glad earth's children, and their souls refine.
I hate proud man, and like to make him feel
He may not crush free woman 'neath his heel. [7] 

Schiller's accentuation of the motif of individual freedom, its opposition to the surrounding world is not accidental: it is a striking feature of the romantic style that reigned in European culture at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Another characteristic feature of Romanticism is its interest in the exotic East. No doubt, the Middle East and India were known in Europe much better than the Far East. The British conquest of India and the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon stimulated the emerging oriental studies (e.g. the multivolume report of Napoleon’s expedition included a description of Middle Eastern music and musical instruments) and, as a consequence, these studies were reflected in literature, painting and music. E.g., the oriental poem by T. Moore Lalla-Rookh (1817) formed the basis of R. Schumann's oratorio Paradise and Peri (1843), C. Pugni's ballet Lalla-Rookh, or the Rose of Lahore, and F. David's comic opera Lalla-Rookh (1862). David’s music includes authentic oriental motifs recorded by him during his travels around the Middle East. We find the signs of acquaintance with the music of the East in the music of H. Berlioz (opera Les Troyens), C. Frank (symphonic poem Les Djinns), M. Glinka (Ruslan and Lyudmila), A. Borodin (symphonic tableau In Central Asia, opera Prince Igor), N. Rimsky-Korsakov (suite Scheherazade, opera Sadko) and a number of other XIX-century composers. One can find the oriental couleur locale even in the music of such a seemingly pure Austro-German composer as F. Schubert (operas Graf von Gleichen and Sakuntala, chamber vocal piece Klage um Ali Bey, and a few gazelles set to music). At the same time, because of the cultural isolation of China at that time, the Europeans scarcely had any idea about authentic Chinese music or musical instruments. Therefore, European musical works of the XIX century on Chinese themes are typical examples of "chinoiserie", i.e. a Western stylization of Chinese culture, e.g. the comic operas Le cheval de bronze by D. Aubert and The Mandarin’s son by C. Cui or Tea (Chinese Dance) from the ballet The Nutcracker by P. Tchaikovsky.

C.-M. Weber's incidental music for Schiller's Turandot (1809) presents an exception, as he used a theme from his Overtura Cinesa (based on the Chinese melody from the Musical Dictionary by Rousseau, which he, in his turn, derived from the works of the Jesuit missionaries in China). This is apparently the only example of a Chinese melody quoted in European music before Puccini. There are no Chinese melodies in the operas based on Schiller’s play, composed by K.G. Reissiger (Turandot, tragikomishes Oper nach Schiller, 1835), J. Hofen (Turandot, Prinzessin von Schiras, 1838 - note the reference to Iran, the original place of action), and F. Busoni (Turandot, 1917). 

It was the play of Schiller in the Italian translation of Andrea Maffei that Puccini read in 1920, and the libretto is closest to it in terms of the plot. The most significant alterations made by Puccini are the new character of Liu, as well as the assignment of Chinese names to the commedia dell'arte characters. In addition, the librettists G. Adami and R. Simoni rewrote the text, leaving practically not a single line from Maffei's translation. 

Unlike his predecessors, Puccini makes an attempt to recreate the Chinese couleur locale in his music. According to W. Ashbrooke and H. Powers [1], Puccini took authentic Chinese tunes from the music box of the former Italian Ambassador to China, Baron Fassini, and the brochure "Chinese Music" by J. van Aalst. Three melodies come from the music box: Turandot’s leitmotif (Chinese song Molihua), the motive of the three ministers (Ferma! Che fai?) and the Imperial Anthem, all written in the pentatonic mode. He even used the same keys as in the box. As for van Aalst's brochure, it is the source of the imperial procession march from Act II (it occurs twice, once in the original key, but with f replaced with fis, and the other time it is transposed half a tone down), as well as of the beginning of the so-called Anthem to Confucius (this phrase is repeated four times by the choir of priests at the end of the procession of the Persian prince) and of the two folk melodies performed by the ministers in Acts II and III. In terms of orchestration, the march of the imperial procession is especially interesting, since here Puccini replaced the Chinese instruments described by van Aalst (the mouth organ sheng 笙, the transverse flute dizi, 笛子, the end-blown flute xiao 箫, the small gongs yunluo 云锣, drums gu 鼓 and castanets xiangban 响 板 with European instruments with more or less similar sound (muted brass instruments and saxophones behind the stage, snare drum, bass xylophone, celesta and pizzicato solo cello). The drums enter precisely at the moments indicated in the Chinese score of van Aalst. Puccini introduces Chinese gongs into the orchestra as well. 

Puccini also composed a number of tunes in Chinese style. The most characteristic of them are Liu's aria Signore, ascolta and Turandot’s monologue Mai nessun m'avrà. Liu's aria is written in pentatonic, in addition, Puccini uses the Chinese technique of "changing the tone" ("bianyin" 变 音), when one pentatonic mode replaces another due to the transformation of the auxiliary tone into the main one. Thanks to these techniques, "Turandot" can be considered an example of the most authentic rendering of the characteristics of Chinese music in European music. 

References

1. Ashbrook W., Powers H. (1991): Puccini’s Turandot. The End of the Great Tradition. – Princeton University Press, 1991. – 203 p.
2. Gozzi C.: Turandot, Princess of China/ transl. by Jethro Bithell / URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26730/26730-h/26730-h.htm (accessed 05.06.2021).
3. Lesage A.-R., D’Orneval J.-P.: Le théâtre de la foire, ou L'opéra-comique /URL: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5505761v?rk=64378;0 (accessed: 05.06.2021).
4. Nizami of Gandja: The Haft Paykar (The Seven Beauties) / transl. by C.E. Wilson/ URL: http://persian.packhum.org/persian/main?url=pf%3Fauth%3D176%26work%3D001 (accessed: 05.06.2021)
5. Pétis de La Croix: Les mille et un jours: contes persans (nouvelle édition accompagnée de notes et de notices historiques). – Paris: С. Delagrave, 1879. – pp. 69-117.
6. Rashid-al-Din: Compendium of Chronicles / rus. transl. by Y.P. Verkhovsky, ed. I.P. Petrushevsky / URL: http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus16/Rasidaddin_3/frametext1.html (accessed: 05.06.2021).
7. Schiller F.: Turandot: the Chinese Sphinx / transl. by Sabilla Novello / URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26553/26553-h/26553-h.htm (accessed 05.06.2021)
8. Marco Polo: The Travels of Marco Polo / transl. by Henry Yule/ URL: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_4/Chapter_4 (accessed: 05.06.2021)