The Original Chinese Conjuror (2003-06)
Duration: 70’00”
Librettist: Lee Warren
Dramatis Personae: William Robinson (bar.), Dot Robinson (m-sop.), Alexander Herrmann/Voice of Ching Ling Foo (bass), Chai Ping (c-ten.), Soldier/Audience Member/Donald Stevenson/Newspaper Boy/Announcer/Reporter/Harry Elson/Voice of Ching Ling Foo (ten.)
Instrumentation: cl. (doubling b.cl.), accord., pno. (doubling celesta, toy pno., finger-cymb., Chinese t-blk., whirling tube and Chinese gong), perc. (2 w-blk., almglock. 8 button gongs, Chinese gong, 2 Chinese palm balls, 2 Chinese t-blk. (large and small), claves, crot., finger cymb., glock. gun shot (on stage), hi-hat, Jew's harp, mar., mark tree, metal wind chime, pedal b-dr. (optional as part of the drum kit), rin, small Chinese clash cymb., s-dr., susp-cymb., tam-tam, tanggu, tri., whirling tube), vlc., db. (doubling small Chinese clash cymb.).
First Performance: Richard Morris (bar.), Sophie Louise Dann (m-sop.), Paul Leonard (bass), Andrew Watts (c-ten.), Phillip Sutton (ten.), Almeida Ensemble and Timothy Redmond (cond.); Martin Duncan (director), Francis O’Connor (designer), Chris Ellis (lighting); Southwold Pier, Aldeburgh, Suffolk; 15th June 2006 as part of 59th Aldeburgh Festival.
Notes: The Original Chinese Conjuror was commissioned and developed by Aldeburgh Almeida Opera with the support of the Genesis Foundation. Also see Suite from The Original Chinese Conjuror and Someone to Guide Him.
“But when it was first seen 12 years ago, staged on Southwold Pier as part of the 2006 Aldeburgh festival, Raymond Yiu’s The Original Chinese Conjuror seemed that rare thing, a piece of latter-day music theatre that was entirely musically and dramatically successful within its self-imposed constraints. Its outstanding qualities – economical, unfussy drama combined with a wryly witty text and a score that careers happily from Broadway musical to 1960s expressionism via tango and Edwardian vaudeville – have stayed as fresh as ever.”
“Written with an extraordinary and engaging fluency that swept through 12 short scenes, seamless in the interweaving of speech and song... Lee Warren’s sparky, adroit libretto, too, was a formidably fluent exercise in compressed story-telling.”