Review | In ‘Dragon’s Tale’ at the Luminato Festival, a young woman looks to the past to help inform the present

Dragon’s Tale

Written by Mark Brownell, composed by Chan Ka Nin, directed by Michael Hidetoshi Mori. Until June 18 at Harbourfront Centre Concert Stage, 235 Queens Quay W. luminatofestival.com

Look to the past to help inform the present.

That’s what Xiao Lian (Alicia Ault) does in “Dragon’s Tale,” the sonically enterprising but thematically tangled new opera by composer Chan Ka Nin and librettist Mark Brownell.

The young Chinese-Canadian woman, torn between living her life and spending time with her widowed, terminally ill father (Todd Jang), is transported to ancient China, where she observes the story of the great poet Qu Yuan (also Jang).

Banished from the royal court of King Huai of Chu (Mishael Eusebio), the esteemed Qu Yuan spends his final days in a small fishing village on the river Miluo. There, embedded among the villagers, Xiao Lian witnesses the poet’s tragic death in the water, an event that purportedly marked the beginning of China’s dragon boat racing tradition.

But what exactly does Xiao Lian glean from her journey to the past?

That’s unclear from Brownell’s libretto, which, in moving between present-day Canada and ancient China, is pulled in too many different directions. It’s part family story, part history lesson, part celebration of dragon boat racing.

At its heart is the narrative about a daughter and her misunderstood father. But with his thinly drawn characters, Brownell adds little to the often explored theme of generational conflict between immigrant children and parents.

Chan’s music, however, is tonally vibrant, filled with steely fanfare, boisterous percussion and intricate harmonic layers in the strings. It’s an ever engaging score (conducted by David Fallis) that draws upon traditional western instruments and Chinese ones.

It’s unfortunate that Thursday’s opening night performance of this Tapestry Opera and Soundstreams co-production was plagued by persistent sound and mic issues. (That there isn’t a credited sound designer for this amplified production might be to blame.)

Those issues aside, director Michael Hidetoshi Mori’s production makes full use of the sprawling, open-air Harbourfront Centre Concert Stage, appropriately located just steps away from the water of Lake Ontario.

The cast is uniformly strong. Mezzo-soprano Evanna Lai, in particular, is captivating in the dual roles of Xiao Lian’s late mother and Zhang Yi, Qu Yuan’s nemesis in the royal court.

This production, which concludes Sunday, is an opera of ideas, of which there are many, some especially moving. The creators just need to decide which to focus on.

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