The plot teems with sex, incest, contradictions, and coincidences. The conclusion has a stage littered with bodies.Well, much like any opera then. Except that this one, “Thunderstorm,” is special — it is the debut of the Shanghai Opera House in Britain. Along with the Shanghai Ballet, it is holding a short season at the English National Opera’s Coliseum.If the storyline is ridiculous, with a body count to match a Shakespearean tragedy or Tarantino’s movies, the same is true of many Western classical operas. The method of dispatch of many of the star-crossed lovers is a particularly malevolent thunderstorm, with the lightning having an uncanny ability to strike just the right person at just the right moment. Given that the odds of being fatally killed by lightning are 1 in 10 million, this family is particularly unlucky – or especially worthy of divine punishment, whichever way you look at it.We watch a whole family being torn apart. It started years ago, when its head, Zhou Puyuan, had a son after an affair with his maid Shiping. His wife Fanyi later tried to get revenge by seducing her stepson, who loves the new maid Sifeng and gets her pregnant. At this point, Shiping shows up (by accident, of course) and reveals that she is also the mother of Sifeng, which makes the lovers siblings. One son dies in the lightning, another kills himself, and Zhou Puyuan is left with an insane wife and maid.With two casts doing the shows, it may be invidious to point to individuals, though tenor Han Peng as Zhou Ping and soprano Xu Xiaoying as Fanyi were both exceptional. While players sometimes stand motionless as another emotes, director Zha Mingzhe lets the singing do its magic for the most part. The orchestra, augmented with unusual Chinese instrumentation such as pipa and erhu, is conducted by Zhang Guoyong.The 2006 opera is by Chinese composer and librettist Mo Fan, and is based on the 1935 play written by Cao Yu, which has been filmed by Bruce Lee, among others.“Thunderstorm” runs through August 14 at the London Coliseum.
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