THE ORPHAN

Opera in Two Acts and Six Scenes

Music by Jeffrey Ching

Libretto drawn by the composer from (in historical order) Sima Qian 司馬遷, Liu Xiang 劉向,
Ji Junxiang 紀君祥 (the Chinese authors either transliterated according to their archaic pronunciation or translated by the composer into English), Pietro Metastasio, Voltaire, Arthur Murphy, Tomàs de Yriarte,
the anonymous author of Der Chineser oder die Gerechtigkeit des Schicksales, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
and Sir Walter H. Medhurst

COMPOSER'S PREFACE TO HIS LIBRETTO FOR THE ORPHAN

On the historical background.
The astonishing thing about the tale of the Orphan of Zhao is that so much of it actually happened. If we cross-reference the chronology of the oldest stratum of the tale in the Zuozhuan, Bk. VIII (fourth century BC) with the more familiar details from Sima Qian's Shiji, ch. 43 (first century BC), we arrive at the following historically attested dates:
596 BC (3rd year of Duke Jing)—Zhao Shuo (Osmingti in the opera) achieves a military victory and marries the late Duke Cheng's older sister, apparently crowning the political ascendancy of the Zhao clan. But as the result of the intrigues of the envious Tu'an Gu (Dag-Ngans-Kagh in the opera), the Zhaos are massacred. The same year, the Orphan of Zhao, called Zhao Wu, is born. Cheng Ying and Gongsun Chujiu (Alsingo in the opera) dress up an abandoned baby (and not Cheng Ying's own child) in the Orphan's rich clothes. Gongsun Chujiu allows himself to be falsely accused of harbouring the Orphan and is killed together with the false orphan by Tu'an Gu/Dag-Ngans-Kagh's men.
582 BC (17th year of Duke Jing)—Zhao Wu/The Orphan reaches the age of fifteen, having been brought up in secret by Cheng Ying. The same year, Duke Jing falls gravely ill and Han Jue (Étan in the opera) reveals the Orphan's existence to the ailing ruler. Tu'an Gu/Dag-Ngans-Kagh is executed and all the Zhao property and honours are restored.
577 BC (3rd year of Duke Li)—Cheng Ying commits suicide.
545 BC (12th year of Duke Ping)—Zhao Wu/The Orphan rises to the position of the Duke's chief minister.
The Zuozhuan makes no mention of Tu'an Gu/Dag-Ngans-Kagh, Cheng Ying, or Gongsun Chujiu/Alsingo, but omission is not in itself contradiction. What is disturbing is that the Zuozhuan credits one of the Zhao family's own members with the massacre of the clan: the Orphan's own mother Zhao Zhuangji (Arfisa in the opera), who had had an adulterous affair with Zhao Shuo/Osmingti's younger or youngest brother Zhao Ying in the winter of 589 BC. In the spring of the following year Zhao Ying's brothers Zhao Tong and Zhao Kuo banished him to the state of Qi (in modern Shandong province). Then in 582 BC (coinciding with Sima Qian's date for the Orphan's restitution), the vindictive Zhao Zhuangji/Arfisa took her revenge against her brothers-in-law Zhao Tong and Zhao Kuo by accusing them of treason to Duke Cheng, who thereupon ordered their deaths. Apparently Zhao Wu/The Orphan did not have to survive in hiding but was openly raised by his vicious mother in the ducal palace, though all the Zhao lands were confiscated and given to one Qi Xi. The very same year—and not fifteen years later—Han Jue/Étan rebuked Duke Cheng for 'leaving without any posterity' (wu hou—probable indication of widespread executions) a family who had served him ably and loyally for generations. The Zuozhuan concludes, "On this [the duke] appointed [the Orphan/Zhao] Wu [the representative of the Zhao family] and restored to him its lands" (adapted from James Legge's 1872 translation, p. 367). Thereafter the power and influence of the Zhao family, once brought so near the brink of extinction, grows steadily until finally, along with two other prominent families, it brings about the dissolution of the Duchy of Jin in 402 BC, the Zhao family constituting themselves into an independent state which subsists until the unification of China under the First Emperor in 221 BC.
Interesting as it would have been to tell these two versions in parallel (like the several Orphic myths interleaved in Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus), it was the creative possibilities inherent in the transplantation of Ji Junxiang's play to Enlightenment Europe which for me were more interesting still—as I believe they would be for contemporary, cosmopolitan audiences.

On the literary and phonological sources and their treatment.
The Orphan is based principally on the most famous version of the tale, the play called Zhaoshi gu'er (The Orphan of Zhao) by Ji Junxiang, a Yuan dynasty playwright about whom practically nothing is known other than that his five other plays have vanished and that he was a native of Dadu (modern Beijing). His verses are colourful and moving, the fourteenth-century dialogue racy and colloquial. (In a very few places I have slipped in single lines of terse, archaic phraseology from Sima Qian's Shiji and Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan and Xinxu of fifteen hundred years earlier, where (for instance) Cheng Ying and Alsingo debate who is to raise the Orphan and who is to die falsely accused of harbouring him—an exchange the ethical content of which seemed to demand the stylistic authority of Han dynasty prose.) However Ji Junxiang's dramatic structure and poetic verses tend to the expansive: there are five acts and a prologue, and the same poetic themes often undergo multiple variations before there is any advance in plot. In the interests of compression I have stripped the tale down to its barest essentials and used only perhaps five percent of the dialogue and verses. For example, throughout the sentencing and deaths of Osmingti and Arfisa in Act I, Scene I, I leave Dag-Ngans-Kagh's hatred of the Zhao family unexplained, though a few choice phrases in later scenes seem by chance to shed light on his motives. I hope this approach takes away the expressive preponderance of mere words and redistributes it where in an opera it rightly belongs—to music and gesture.
Ji Junxiang's play reached Europe in an abridged French translation by the Jesuit missionary Joseph Prémare in Jean-Baptiste du Halde's Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique et Physqiue de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise of 1735. It was adapted by (among others) Pietro Metastasio as the Italian opera L'eroe cinese first set by Giuseppe Bonno in 1752, by Voltaire as the French play L'orphelin de la Chine in 1755, by Arthur Murphy as the English play The Orphan of China in 1759, and by Tomàs de Yriarte in a Spanish translation of Voltaire's play as El huérfano de la China in around 1770. Consistently with the Aristotelian 'unities' and the ideals of 'enlightened despotism', in none of these adaptations is the Orphan seen to grow from infancy to adulthood, and only in one (Murphy's) does he discover any necessity for enforcing a lex talionis. In the present opera, the Orphan's parents take their names of Osmingti and Arfisa from an incidental mention in Murphy (in which the latter occurs under the less Hispanic spelling of 'Arphisa'), though they are dead by the start of the play. In their one duet they sing, respectively, ten English lines from Murphy and nine Spanish lines from Yriarte. The righteous Han Jue is named Étan after the loyal confidant in Voltaire, twelve of whose French lines provide the texts for a sequence of three brief arias. The elderly Gongson Chujiu is called Alsingo after the old man who in L'eroe cinese is described as having saved the life of the false orphan, but himself never appears. He sings the twelve Italian lines of the two arias given by Metastasio to the imperial regent Leango. Finally, there remain a German adaptation from 1774 called Der Chineser oder die Gerechtigkeit des Schicksales by an anonymous author—which does pursue the Orphan's vengeful destiny to its conclusion—and Goethe's Hellenised fragment Elpenor of August-September 1781, so it is fitting that for the denouement of the opera the fifteen-year-old Orphan turns out to be German. In the Act II Quintet all five European languages occur simultaneously, the polyglot text taken from all the afore-mentioned eighteenth-century sources except Goethe.
The arch-villain Dag-Ngans-Kagh sings only Ji Junxiang's Yuan dynasty lines, but in a pronunciation so bizarre—so profuse in glottal stops, diphthongs, and velar fricatives—as to minimise any possible identification between him and any living audience. His fourteenth-century Chinese text is transcribed entirely in the spoken Chinese of the Early Zhou period, of about the eleventh to the seventh centuries BC, as it has been reconstructed in Alex Schuessler's A Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese (Honolulu, 1987) and William H. Baxter's A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology (Berlin/New York, 1992). This long-dead language (also called Old Chinese) appears not to have been tonal, so Cheng Ying's usual method is to shout the translation of each of Dag-Ngans-Kagh's words as it is chanted, imitating only the peculiar grammatical construction of the Chinese original. He does the same for the Yuan Mandarin dialogues; but in addition—by means of Edwin G. Pulleyblank's Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin (Vancouver, 1991)—he can also intone the verbatim translation in strict accordance with the five tones of Yuan Mandarin.

On the Chinese musical sources and their treatment.
In essence nearly all the music of the present opera was already composed seven hundred years ago, during the Mongol Yuan dynasty. The extant fourteenth-century play by Ji Junxiang assigns to each aria text the exact melody to which it should be sung, out of the hundreds of pre-existing opera melodies then current in the repertoire. In a large number of cases, these seven-hundred-year-old melodies are accessible to us today in the modern transcriptions by Yang Fusen (in his "Poetic Songs of the Yuan", Chinese Culture, xl, no. 1 (Taipei, 1970), pp. 82-123).
A full account of the compositional devices used in the elaboration of these melodies would take up a small book, and must be deferred to another occasion. In general I have situated the Yuan melodies at roughly the same poetic or dramatic junctures indicated by Ji Junxiang, on the assumption that the Yuan playwright understood better than we which Yuan melody was most expressive of which text or situation. This absolute primacy of the Yuan melodies is respected even where Ji Junxiang's verses are replaced by non-Chinese lines of equivalent emotional import from Metastasio, Voltaire, Murphy, Yriarte, Friedrichs, or Goethe, or interpolate appropriate Chinese lines from the pre-Yuan authors Sima Qian and Liu Xiang. If we define the opera composer's task as the quest for apt melodic expression, then that task was accomplished for The Orphan by Ji Junxiang long before I was born. In effect, I may inadvertently have created an opera that, in many of its parts, is not merely, and perhaps not even primarily expressive, but rather decorative—quarrying rare gems from the deep mines of ethnomusicology and setting them with the glossy finish of a musical lapidary.
As each scene of The Orphan confines itself to a single action enacted by a small number of characters (usually just two in dialogue), the musical raw material of each scene is correspondingly limited: for instance one Yuan melody suffices for the whole of Act I, Scene I; three for Scene II; and two or three (two of the melodies being close variants with the same title) for Scene III. But as the successive numbers within each scene are extremely unlike in style, mood, technique, and even geographic origin from each other, this limitation is a strength, in that it gives to elements otherwise incompatible the strictest underlying musical unity and thematic concision. For example, the three solos of the arch-villain Dag-Ngans-Kagh are patterned with great fidelity on, respectively, Korean Confucian music, Tibetan Buddhist chanting, and Japanese gagaku. But the first precedes an hommage to Purcell; the second, an hommage to Rameau; and the third, an hommage to Sacchini. Only because each unlikely pairing is founded on absolutely identical musical themes does the composer dare offer such a farrago to the public without fear of incomprehension.
The analogy with the decorative arts could be taken further. In the solos and declamatory music of Osmingti, Arfisa, Étan, and Alsingo, the distinctive manners of French tragédie lyrique and Italian opera seria are genetically spliced with Chinese melodies of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. A plausible literary parallel might be the virtuoso parodies of style and genre in Joyce's Ulysses which cross-breed Dublin pub life with Gaelic epic. In Act I of The Orphan, the musical language invented for a character is usually an answer to some such question as, "If my Chinese role corresponds to such-and-such an archetype in the French and Italian operas that were being sung when this Yuan play reached Europe, what would a Rameau or Sacchini have done with my arias had he had authentic Yuan music at his disposal?" The Chinese gardens at Kew and Drottningholm, the European palace and fountains in Yuanmingyuan, the chinoiserie furniture of Thomas Chippendale, the Italianate Chinese scrolls of Giuseppe Castiglione—all testify to the hybrid perfection the eighteenth century achieved in the visual and plastic arts, but which was never (to my knowledge) seriously essayed in any European music prior to Weber's Turandot in the early Romantic period. Perhaps the relevant numbers of The Orphan could, at the dawn of the twenty-first century two-hundred-and–fifty years later, belatedly fill this residual lacuna in the history of the Rococo arts.

On the non-Chinese musical sources and their treatment.
The following six numbers, or one-fifth of the total of thirty, use no Yuan dynasty material at all:
• No. 1—contains no melodic content
• No. 2—patterned faithfully on the rhythms of the overture to Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, the superimposed Ondes Martenot part an attempt at an exact transcription into music of the brushstrokes for the Chinese characters Zhao 趙 and gu 孤 (together meaning "the orphan of Zhao"), in the hand of the Yuan calligrapher Zhao Mengfu
• No. 6—develops fugally the chromatic bass-line composed to the Yuan melody of No. 5
• No. 19—elaborated reprise of No. 2
• No. 20—contains no melodic content
• No. 25—free composition over a bass-line taken from the Introduction to C. P. E. Bach's Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu
Besides these, there are five numbers, all in Act II, that mix Yuan material with C. P. E. Bach motifs:
• No. 23—the harp and celesta parts use a twelve-tone row derived from the C. P. E. Bach bass-line in No. 25 and develop it in the classical dodecaphonic way, while the vocal part is wholly Yuan dynasty (although constantly changing key signature to keep pace with the twelve-tone harmonies); furthermore the instrumental figuration in the outer sections is modelled closely on the outer sections of the "Fantasia" from C. P. E. Bach's Sonata Wq 63/6.
• No. 24—combines a Yuan melody with the same C. P. E. Bach bass-line
• No. 26—another Yuan melody is harmonised dodecaphonically and constantly interrupted by fragments of the same C. P. E. Bach bass-line; further the Yuan melody is adapted to the rhythms of C. P. E. Bach's Sonata in C, Wq 65.47, 1st movement, and later combined with brass fanfares from the bass aria "Ihr Tore Gottes" from Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu
• No. 27—reprise of No. 22 (itself based on the last two-and-a-half bars of a Yuan melody) combined with the brass fanfares from "Ihr Tore Gottes"
• No. 29—free composition ("Variazioni a quattro") broadly allusive of C. P. E. Bach's style and instrumentation, with abrupt superimpositions of Yuan melodic fragments scored according to Ming dynasty prescriptions (viz. of Zhu Zaiyu) and inflected with the quarter- and eighth-tones of the Qing dynasty musical scale

On anomalies in the opera's dramaturgy.
The Orphan is an opera in which, after Arfisa's death at the end of Scene I and apart from her ghostly reappearance in two later numbers, all the characters are male, and in which from beginning to end there is no romantic interest of any kind. Of the male characters, one at least (the soprano part of the Orphan) and perhaps another (the contralto part of Osmingti) are taken by women. But the sung texts of these characters offer no respite from the obsessively patriarchal themes of the opera—ancestry, honour, revenge.
The story of the opera is told alongside another story—the self-referential one of its transmission from China to Europe and its reception there. At many points the second story appears to upstage the first. It may be, therefore, that in The Orphan many audiences will behold for the first time an opera that is simultaneously an academic monograph about its own multicultural, polyglot origins, thus importing to the operatic stage some equivalent of the drama of ideas of Shaw and Stoppard.
The opera is in at least five European languages, and two Chinese languages (Early Zhou and Yuan Mandarin) which are a thousand years apart and both incomprehensible today. By and large the characters sing their arias in their various national tongues (eighteenth-century English, Spanish, French, Italian, or German) but converse with each other in Yuan Mandarin—the Chinese spoken when Ji Junxiang's play was written, and in effect the lingua franca of The Orphan.
The villain Dag-Ngans-Kagh alone speaks Early Zhou Chinese, the spoken Chinese of the eleventh to seventh centuries BC, immediately before the epoch in which the historical Orphan of Zhao lived. (In this exception lies a glimmering of an idea not new to Judeo-Christian thought or to readers of La Rochefoucauld: that vice is somehow older, deeper, more pervasive, perhaps more fundamentally human than virtue.) Further, his is the only singing part to sing its assigned language exclusively, since even in scenes with the other characters he holds no genuine converse with them but only regards them as objects of envy, suspicion, or wrath. His is a role of superhuman—or sub-human—turpitude.
By contrast, the character of Cheng Ying is intended to be an Everyman with whom the audience has an instant rapport. The most prolix role in the opera, Cheng Ying never sings but only speaks, or rather for the most part intones in a Sprechgesang in which the rise and fall of pitch is systematically indicated according to the four tones of Yuan Mandarin. Cheng Ying must recite not only the lines specific to his role, but also a simultaneous translation of the other characters' Yuan Mandarin or Early Zhou Chinese into the vernacular of whatever country the opera is being performed in—as if in a foreign film one were to hear both the original and then the dubbed language a split second later. That would be the case even with a performance in China, since no living Chinese speaks Yuan Mandarin or Early Zhou. Cheng Ying's part is therefore rather long, rather busy, and of pivotal importance. I can readily conceive of a production where his part would be split between a "Narrator" who—like the Evangelist in Götz Friedrich's staging of Bach's St. Matthew Passion—reads from a book all of Cheng Ying's lines and stands apart from the scene, and a mute actor who mimes all of Cheng Ying's actions within the scene.
About thirty-two minutes out of the one and three-quarter hours of music which comprise the opera are purely instrumental. If one includes the eight-minute choral finale (No. 30), which has no dramatic development but only spectacle and dance, the total comes to forty minutes, or about two-fifths of the opera. Except for the overture, this substantial fraction of the score is meant to accompany action that is not sung or spoken or intoned, but only mimed. For example, the longest number in Act I (No. 19, "Alsingo Sacrifices to the Spirits of his Ancestors") is an eight-minute orchestral chaconne accompanying a mute pantomime which neither advances the narrative nor serves any practical purpose as an entr'acte for a change of sets. All these wordless interludes, however, should be rich occasion for a director's or choreographer's scenic fantasy.
Hence, perhaps there is room in any staging of The Orphan for the total, relentless choreographic control of every spatial relationship and nuanced gesture as it is found in the Chinese or Japanese theatre. In the West, I have beheld this theatrical geometry only once—when the Comédie-Française brought Moliére's Les fourberies de Scapin to London in 1999.
Throughout the opera, Asiatic and European styles clash in proximate numbers of unalloyed ethnographic purity, but then inextricably mix in other numbers indistinguishably one or the other. In the penultimate scene confronting the Orphan in Prussian uniform with the Chinese opera villain Dag-Ngans-Kagh, East and West mingle and separate as oil and water, the empfindsamer Stil of C. P. E. Bach sporadically overlaid with pentatonic interventions in the Ming manner.
The Orphan is also a tentative exploration of a new diachronic musical language in which the inherited dichotomies of "Classical", "Neo-classical", "Modern", and "Post-modern" are dissolved. In no other era but our own could such an intimate dialogue between civilisations so remote take place, and yet in which every idea under discussion has been around since time immemorial.
The opera's denouement is tragic, but since it is just, the music that accompanies the harsh retributive justice which befalls the villain is jubilant and refined. The epigraph from Yeats' Lapis Lazuli facing the first page of the score justifies this aesthetic of a cheerful tragedy:

There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.

Perhaps this "gaiety" ought not to be confined to the very ending of the opera, but indeed "transfigure" the whole from start to finish. Laughter is platitudinously said to be subversive, but I don't believe this to be its only therapeutic value. In a world where no stage tragedy can compete with CNN or BBC World for verisimilitude, laughter is also the urgent optimism of despair, plain and simple. Étan is over-dressed and his heroics over-played; Alsingo looks exactly like chinoiserie wallpaper come alive and is a little too effeminate for his manly end; Dag-Ngans-Kagh is a grotesque Beijing opera villain who sounds like an invader from Mars; Cheng Ying between his various antics can barely manage to keep all his lines and simultaneous translations separate, and in the passages where he speaks a non-Chinese language using the five Chinese tones, must approximate Singaporean pidgin to amusing effect. All this ought to keep the listener hovering between gasping and chuckling, and if in his confusion he laughs, it is not so bad a thing if he is thereby prevented from taking his own moral outrage too seriously. (Moral outrage—or the pretence of it—is the cradle of wars.) Further, reality is often so horrible that for sheer survival we must hope that it conforms to a higher justice, and from that perspective tragic events sometimes acquire an "unbearable lightness of being". But I do not feel that The Orphan should be staged with any faltering of "tone", with any casual slapstick or visual "gags". On the contrary, it should be played as "straight" as possible, free of any hint of self-critical irony or scepticism, and with such an exaggerated and strenuously heightened seriousness and literalness that laughter should follow as inevitably from nervous release as breaking wind from a stomach ache.
The preceding paragraph attempts to explain most of what transpires in Act I. With the appearance of the Orphan in Act II, the opera breathes a different air. The Orphan is meant to be the opera's first and only fully rounded human character, touching and real, without a hint of caricature or satire. Indeed, all the characters with which he comes into contact themselves acquire a more touching and real aspect from the encounter: an increasingly solemn Cheng Ying finally loses all his buffo traits; Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, and Étan rise as ghosts to the heights of the terrible and sublime; and even Dag-Ngans-Kagh shows, in the four-and-a-half-minute space of his single exchange with the Orphan, unexpected depths of courage and pathos. It is only in the last scene of the opera—with its festive choruses and four "ballets" of the villain's disembowelled and mutilated body parts—that the surreal atmosphere of the first act returns to close the work. It must look like a Dalì painting, or like something between a Walt Disney cartoon and a Papal High Mass with, of course, the inevitable chinoiserie elements for local colour.
Fundamentally, The Orphan is a latter-day court opera, down even to its "castrato" parts. It is a court opera in this sense: that even in our democratic age one must go to experience it with a certain psychical preparation—that of leaving everyday concerns at the door, and shaping body and soul into a certain hankering for something beyond the everyday, as once one did on entering into royal audience, or as pious Christians still do who proudly wear their "Sunday best" for the Sunday liturgy. It is also a true "number opera" that I hope a contemporary audience will not find altogether lacking in dramatic impetus. Nevertheless the long succession of autonomous musical pieces—which parallel in some fashion the almost mechanical sequence of tragic or heroic suicides from one scene to the next—give The Orphan the air of a great ritual spectacle, and both sets and costumes must be of an opulence to match. The villain's misdeeds are momentous in their consequences, and the sacrifices required to undo them, to restore the moral balance of the universe, must be of commensurate majesty. All the actions depicted—good and evil, tender or heroic—must convey an unmistakable spirit of ceremony, and to this end perhaps the function of masks, face-painting, costumes, and stylised gesture in the Oriental theatre would not be without relevance. There should also be in any staging of this opera a conscious reconciliation of the violence of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty with the Neo-classical precision and elegance of Racine. Though the characters may correspond to nothing the modern bourgeois meets in everyday life, ultimately they must arouse in him the oldest, strongest emotions of the human race. But the paradox of a civilised brutality, or of a brutalising civilisation, must lose its intellectual power unless the production adheres to the fundamental aesthetic of the score: that of an aristocratic beauty and refinement which must never, ever be compromised no matter what horrors are portrayed onstage. If Wagner represented for Nietzsche the rebirth of Greek tragedy, perhaps The Orphan aspires to be a renaissance of the tragédie lyrique for a twenty-first century sensibility.

J.C.

© 2007 by Jeffrey Ching

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Sung Roles:
THE ORPHAN (soprano), son of Osmingti and Arfisa, known as Elpenor, aged 15
ARFISA (soprano), the Duke of Jin's sister and the Orphan's mother, married to Osmingti; later THE SHADE OF ARFISA
OSMINGTI (male or female contralto), the Duke of Jin's brother-in-law and the Orphan's father, married to Arfisa; later THE SHADE OF OSMINGTI
ALSINGO (haute-contre), an elderly officer of the Duke's court living in retirement, loyal friend to Osmingti; later THE SHADE OF ALSINGO
ÉTAN (baritone), a general of the Duke's army, middle-aged, indebted to Osmingti for his preferment; later THE SHADE OF ÉTAN
DAG-NGANS-KAGH (bass), a great officer at the Duke's court, envious of Osmingti
OFFSTAGE CRIES OF VENGEANCE (sopranos, altos, tenors, basses)
CHORUS OF COURTIERS (sopranos, altos, tenors, basses)

Spoken Role:
CHENG YING (male actor), a physician of Osmingti's household

Mimed Roles:
CHENG YING (mime), a physician of Osmingti's household
A EUROPEAN MONARCH OF THE BAROQUE ERA, WITH HIS ATTENDANT COURT
THE SHADES OF MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN OF OSMINGTI'S CLAN MURDERED BY DAG-NGANS-KAGH
THE DIGNITARIES OF THE CHAOXIAN, WONU, AND TUFAN EMBASSIES
A CHINESE EMPEROR OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, WITH HIS ATTENDANT COURT
GUARDS, SOLDIERS, TORTURERS, AND EXECUTIONERS

Danced Roles:
THE SEVERED AND DISEMBOWELLED BODY PARTS OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH

THE EVENTS OF THE OPERA ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN THE DUCHY OF JIN 晉 IN ZHOU 周 DYNASTY CHINA (IN THE MODERN PROVINCE OF SHANXI), DURING
THE EARLY SIXTH CENTURY BC.

N.B. The IPA-based orthography used in the score for the Old Chinese and Yuan Mandarin texts are vastly simplified below.

LIBRETTO

EXORDIUM & OUVERTURE

No. 1 EXORDIUM—THE EVIL OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH (Percussive Rant with Speech)
(The curtain is still lowered but the house lights remain lit. Dag-Ngans-Kagh 屠岸賈, in the extravagant costume and makeup of a villainous minister of the Chinese opera, appears on the proscenium and delivers two lines in verse in Early Zhou 周 Chinese taken from the Yuan 元 drama Zhaoshi gu'er 趙氏孤兒 by Ji Junxiang 紀君祥. The mime playing the middle-aged Cheng Ying 程嬰, clad in the timeless garb of a Chinese peasant, stands to one side, a faintly comic Everyman who interprets through vivid and exaggerated gesture alone all of Cheng Ying's spoken lines. Meanwhile the speaking actor playing the middle-aged Cheng Ying, unobstrusive in contemporary dress (such as a business suit), stands with his score to one side, either delivering Cheng Ying's own lines or translating the other characters' Chinese lines into the vernacular of the audience.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (loudly declaiming to audience from proscenium, curtain down)
Nyin myag gats 'hla' syum,

Cheng Ying (translating for Dag-Ngans-Kagh in conversational tone to audience)
"Man means the tiger no harm,…"

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
Hla' gwyugch hlang nyin 'ryœks!

Cheng Ying
"…but the tiger certainly means harm to Man!"

(Right after Cheng Ying's last word, all exit and the Ouverture begins.)

No. 2 OUVERTURE ("La battaile entre Zhao Mengfu et Jean-Philippe Rameau")
(In the tradition of Lully's time, as the Ouverture begins the curtain rises and the house lights gradually dim. The stage, representing the palace apartments of Osmingti and Arfisa, is still in shadow, but the ill-fated couple may be seen in silhouette frozen in the poses with which the action of Act I begins. Apart from this, absolutely no action must occur onstage until the beginning of the act. The orchestral music combines calligraphic transcriptions for the Ondes Martenot of the ideographs Zhao 趙 and gu 孤—meaning 'The Orphan of Zhao'—taken from Zhao Mengfu's 趙孟頫 Fushenguan ji 福神觀記 (Zhao Mengfu shufa quanji 趙孟頫書法全集, Beijing 1995-6, vol. 2, pp. 654, 685), with a Rameau-patterned French overture (Hippolyte et Aricie, Ouverture) in the tuned percussion. Act I immediately follows.)

ACT I, Scene I

(At the start of the Ouverture the curtain rose on the palace apartments of Osmingti and Arfisa. As Act I begins the stage brightens, revealing Osmingti and Arfisa on their knees as Dag-Ngans-Kagh reads them the forged ducal decree of execution. Cheng Ying provides a simultaneous translation into the vernacular of the audience, interpolating—in the manner of a buffo patter song—a lengthy list of the remotest relatives of the clan included in the death sentence. During this interpolation, the palace doors open downstage to reveal the mass executions in the courtyard outside, either completed or in progress. Osmingti's costume is English gentry, 18th-century, ordinariness at its most elegant, of the period of Gainsborough and Reynolds. Arfisa, apparently heavily pregnant and nearing term, is dressed soberly in black Spanish lace and piously veiled in the manner of Goya's portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel, with a wide red sash such as one finds in his portraits of the Duchess of Alba.)

No. 3 THE CUNNING OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH: A FORGED DECREE (Chant with Speech)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (reading the decree to the kneeling Osmingti and Arfisa)
Diagwch Sungrawk k'wayr tyagch,
hling tyungch klung tyug muryingh:
Gwyarh nyugch 'yit krag pyug tryungw pyug hurawh,
k'yug klung gwrubh pyap,
tsyang nyugch sum purak k'ugch…
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Osmingti kneel-then,
hear Lord-Duke's command:
Because your one-family not-loyal, not-filial,
cheat-Duke break-law,
so-take you three-hundred mouths—"

(to the audience, interpolating a genealogical footnote concerning the 'three-hundred mouths')
even his grandparents, uncle, uncle's wife, spinster aunt, brother, spinster sister, son of wife or concubine, wife of oldest son, nephew, spinster niece, oldest son of oldest son, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, married aunt, married sister, brother's wife, first cousin, spinster first cousin, wife of younger son or wife of son of concubine, nephew's wife, married niece, son of younger son or son of son of concubine, granduncle, granduncle's wife, spinster grandaunt, father's first cousin, father's first cousin's wife, father's spinster first cousin, married female first cousin, first cousin once removed, spinster female first cousin once removed, second cousin, spinster female second cousin, wife of oldest son of oldest son, grandnephew, spinster grandniece, mother's parents, mother's brother, mother's sister, great-granduncle, great-granduncle's wife, spinster great-grandaunt, married grandaunt, grandfather's first cousin, grandfather's first cousin's wife, grandfather's spinster first cousin, father's married female first cousin, father's first cousin once removed, wife of father's first cousin once removed, father's spinster first cousin once removed, first cousin's wife, married female first cousin once removed, first cousin twice removed, spinster first cousin twice removed, married female second cousin, second cousin once removed, spinster second cousin once removed, wife of son of younger son or wife of son of son of concubine, grandnephew's wife, married grandniece, third cousin, spinster third cousin, great-grandson, great-grandnephew, spinster great-grandniece, great-great-grandson, aunt's son, mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son, wife's parents…—

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the still prostate Osmingti and Arfisa, resuming the decree at the point at which the reading was suspended)
…manch mur ryang dzians,
tsyinch mgurang tryug ryuwk.
Dyangh gwyuych lya kag:
Ka gnums Diagwch Sungrawk gwyugch 'yit mrek tyug 'syin,
pyug nyiunch krar tryug,
duk sulyikh sum puan dryaw tinch,
dyigch kwyung gin, rawk tsyugwch, tuar' tagw,
slyuay 'yugh tshyugch 'yit nyug syudch.
Gyug klung tyugch slyuw kryums dzugch pyugch,
tuans dzyuat 'syin sryag,
pyug hngyagch gwyangch mrukh.
Ngut nal Dyagwch Sungrawk,
hlyingh muryingh pyug kharch gwyud murans,
nyugch mtsuw' mtsuw' sdyus tsyinch tyagch!
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"—whole-house noble-commoner,
all suffer execution.
Still there-is residual guilt:
Considering Osmingti has single-vein of kinship,
can't bear-to sentence-death,
exempt-bestow three-fold dynastic protocol,
which-are bowstring, poisoned-wine, short-blade,
at-will choose one and die.
His ducal-wife imprison-seclude in palace,
cut-off-from friend-and-stranger,
none-may go-there.
O-thou Osmingti,
Sacred-Edict not-may defy-delay,
you soon-soon yourself-kill then!"

(Exit Dag-Ngans-Kagh. From within her garments, Arfisa—not pregnant after all, but already a mother—tenderly draws out her newborn son, whom she was concealing from Dag-Ngans-Kagh. The doomed couple entrust their child to Cheng Ying.)

No. 4 CHENG YING RECEIVES HIS CHARGE (Arioso with Tonal Recitation)

Arfisa
Law pu ti shin may tsay ku k'iw.
+
Cheng Ying (for Arfisa)
"Fall not this body to-bury in native-mound

Osmingti
Fun fu lyew say pyen lyang luy liw,
+
Cheng Ying (for Osmingti)
"Entrusting done, cheek-sides both tears flow

Arfisa
Oan yi kü yi xuy tsh'uw;
+
Cheng Ying (for Arfisa)
"My each-phrase each-turns sorrow

Osmingti and Arfisa
Tay xay rr t'o nyen tshang xuw,
Tshew ü oan yen sam pay k'uw,
K'o u ti paw yen k'iw.
+
Cheng Ying (for Osmingti and Arfisa)
"Wait child his years grow after
That to our these three-hundred mouths
May-then-thus repay unjust-woe."

(Exit Cheng Ying with the child to retrieve his medicine chest, or a black, capacious doctor's bag if he is in modern dress. The ensuing duet is performed as if at a royal fête or masque at the court of a Baroque monarch such as Louis XIV or Charles II, its splendours momentarily revealed at the back of the stage by special lighting and mobile props, the monarch shown enthroned and surrounded by his courtiers. Such episodes are to recur in later scenes, always distinguished in the stage directions by the phrase, 'staged as if it were part of a Baroque fête'. )

No. 5 OSMINGTI AND ARFISA'S LAST FAREWELL (Duet)

Osmingti (to Arfisa)
Alas! the loves that hover'd o'er the pillows
Have spread their pinions never to return,
And the pale fates surround us.

Arfisa (to Osmingti)
Criatura mas sublime á mis ojos, y estimable
Que quantos Heroes la mortal locura
Venera como Dioses!

Osmingti (to Arfisa)
Ha! the fell ministers of wrath—and yet
They shall not long insult us in our woes.
By heav'n once more I would not raise the point
Against that hoard of sweets, for endless years
Of universal empire.
It must be so. Alas! It must be so.
+
Arfisa (to Osmingti)
Ó tú que suples
Hoi para mi las veces de ese cielo
Que imploro inútilmente!
Demasiado Te consta ya el rigor de nuestra suerte.
Ha llegado á su colmo el infortunio.
Nuestra hora se acerca.

No. 6 THE DEATHS OF OSMINGTI AND ARFISA

(Pantomime I/Contrapunctus I)
(After elaborate preparation and with exaggeratedly slow, stylised, ritualistic gestures, Osmingti stabs himself with the jewelled dagger bestowed by the ducal decree.)

(Pantomime II/Contrapunctus II)
(Halfway through No. 6, the fugal music that accompanied Osmingti's death is repeated in strict inversion. After elaborate preparation and with exaggeratedly slow, stylised, ritualistic gestures, Arfisa hangs herself with the red sash of her Spanish costume. Then enter Cheng Ying carrying his medicine chest and the Orphan—as the baby now is. He falls prostrate, weeping, before the two corpses. He conceals the Orphan in the medicine chest and exits. Curtain.)

ACT I, Scene II

(Enter Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Cheng Ying on to the proscenium. Having learned that Arfisa has given birth to a son, Dag-Ngans-Kagh orders the encirclement of Osmingti's palace. Cheng Ying stands to one side, translating the orders into the vernacular of the audience. The curtain remains lowered.)

No. 7 THE SWIFTNESS OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH: THE PALACE ENCIRCLED (Chant with Speech)

Dag Ngans-Kagh (issuing a general proclamation from the proscenium)
Didch 'yit ngwyat manch tsyuk sriat,
nguryuans syagwch syig rarch pyug gwyar drid.
Rying nyin dryuan ngarch tik gagwh rying k'yach,
dryagch gragh tsyang kwyun Gan Kyuat,
pragch gryugh pyugch mur,
pyug sryugw tsyins k'yabch tik,
kryigch sryugw k'lyuuts mrukh tik.
Nyak gwyugch dagwh k'lyuuts Diagwch gryigch kwag nryig tyagch,
dzyuan krag k'ryagch tsriamch,
kyugwch dzuk pyug r-yugw.
'Yit pik ragch narch tryang kurikh prangch myun,
pians kuwk tyag tsyang,
hyugw tuk gwyud ngwagh,
sdyus tshyugch gyug dzudch!
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"First-one-month complete,
killing this small-bastard would not be late.
Command-men pass my order forth,
tell subordinate-general Étan,
secure palace-gate,
don't search visitors,
only search departers.
If there-be steal-out Osmingti-orphan-child-person,
whole-family sentence-beheading,
nine-clans none remain.
One wall give me spread-post proclamation,
notifying all-officers,
do-not disobey,
self-convict his crime!"

(Exit Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Cheng Ying. The curtain rises on the main gate and courtyard of Osmingti's palace, guarded by General Étan. Cheng Ying hurries out of the palace gate with his medicine chest, the baby concealed inside. He is obtrusively stopped by Étan, dressed like a hero or god from French Baroque opera but with distinct touches of chinoiserie, which further exaggerate his outlandish appearance. His movements are also in the Baroque manner, perhaps with suggestions of the heroic gestures of Chinese opera. The ensuing aria is staged as if it were part of a Baroque fête.)

No. 8 ÉTAN ACCOSTS CHENG YING (Premier air d'Étan)

Étan (to Cheng Ying, arrogantly)
Les vainqueurs ont parlé, l'esclavage en silence
obéit à leur voix dans cette ville immense;
chacun reste immobile et de crainte et d'horreur
depuis que sous le glaive est tombé l'empereur.

No. 9 THE FIRST INTERROGATION (Speech and Arioso with Tonal Recitation)

Cheng Ying (in plain speech, to himself)
Heaven can be merciful too: what luck it's General Étan guarding the palace gate! He must have been promoted by my old master once. If I can just make my way past him, the little master's life and mine will surely be saved!

Étan (always to Cheng Ying, with authority)
Ni shr shim mo rin?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, with authority)
"You are what man?"

(to Étan, always respectfully)
I am a rustic doctor, surnamed Cheng, am Cheng Ying.

Étan
Ni tsay no li k'ü lay?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"You in what place go-come?"

(to Étan)
I in ducal-palace-midst decoct broth from herbs come.

Étan
Ni xya shim mo yaw?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"You prescribe what herbs?"

(to Étan)
Prescribe a help-mother-broth.

Étan
Ni yen syang¬‿rr li myen shim mo vu kyen?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"Your this box inside what things-items?"

(to Étan)
All are fresh herbs.

Étan
Shr shim mo shung yaw?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"Are which raw herbs?"

(to Étan)
All are radix platycodi, glycyrrhiza euralensis, herba menthae.

Étan
K'o yiw shim mo kya tay?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"Maybe what hidden-bring?"

(to Étan)
Wholly no hidden-bring.

Étan (imperatively)
Yen tung ni k'ü. Tsh'ing Ying ni k'ü!
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"This so, you go. Cheng Ying, you go!"

(Cheng Ying leaves eagerly.)

Étan (imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying xuy lay!
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"Cheng Ying, back-come!"

(Cheng Ying returns hesitantly.)

Étan
Yen syang‿rr li myen shim mo vu kyen?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"This box inside what things-items?"

(to Étan)
All are fresh herbs.

Étan
K'o yiw shim mo kya tay?
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan)
"Maybe what hidden-bring?"

(to Étan)
Wholly no hidden-bring.

Étan (imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying ni k'ü!
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"Cheng Ying, you go!"

(Cheng Ying leaves eagerly.)

Étan (imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying xuy lay!
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"Cheng Ying, back-come!"

(Cheng Ying returns hesitantly.)

Étan (sternly)
Ni k'i tshung pi yiw am muy:
Wo tshew ni k'ü xo, sz nu tsyen li xyen;
Kyew ni xuy lay xo, pyen sz tshen shang t'o maw.
(imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying! Wo k'o suw tsh'ü rin shum lay ye!
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, sternly)
"You its-midst must have secret:
I told you go, you-as arrow leave string;
Called you back-come, then like rug-top drag fur.
(for Étan, imperatively)
Cheng Ying! I can search-out mandrake-root indeed!"

(Abruptly Étan seizes the medicine chest from Cheng Ying. The ensuing aria is staged as if it were part of a Baroque fête.)

No. 10 ÉTAN THREATENS CHENG YING (Deuxième air d'Étan)

Étan (to Cheng Ying, threateningly)
Vous êtes observés; la fuite est impossible;
autour de notre enceinte une garde terrible
aux peuples consternés offre de toutes parts
un rempart hérissé de piques et de dards.

No. 11 THE SECOND INTERROGATION (Tonal Recitation and Arioso)

Cheng Ying (to Étan, humbly, on his knees)
Listen humble-man from-start defend:
Dag-Ngans-Kagh heart born hate-envy,
Alas! Lord-Duke heard-trusting falsity,
Decreed Osmingti bear-sword life-end,
Kill-all nine-degrees kin without survival-road,
Child and mother could not whole-together,
Once parted-birth, one life went-dark,
Told Cheng-Ying take him hide-save,
Long thereafter grow stand become-man,
For his family watch-guard tomb-grave.

(Étan succeeds in forcing open the medicine chest and discovers the Orphan inside.)

Étan (to himself, moved to pity)
Kyen ku rr nye lu shang xan tsin tsin,
K'uw kyaw t'uw rü shi p'un,
Ts'yew ts'ü ts'ü syang‿rr li sz pa shing t'un,
T'o tshing shr tsh'ing rin pu tsz tsay,
Tsz tsay pu tsh'ing rin.
(to Cheng Ying, imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying! Tsyang ku rr xaw k'ü shim shan shim tsh'ü yin.
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, to himself)
"See orphan-child forehead-top sweat flow-flow
Mouth-corner-top milk-food blow
Quiet choke-choke box-within as-if took sound swallow
He truly is become-man not self-be
Self-be not become-man.
(for Étan, imperatively)
Cheng Ying! Take orphan better go deep-mountain deep-place hide."

(to Étan, with alacrity)
Most grateful, general!

(Cheng Ying timidly rises and leaves with the medicine chest, but hesitates as doubts set in. He stops short of leaving the palace gate, and with evident panic returns to kneel before Étan.)

Cheng Ying (to Étan, kneeling)
General!
(with deep anxiety)
I if through this palace-gate go,
You report give Dag-Ngans-Kagh knowledge.

Étan (to Cheng Ying, imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying!
No k'i kyan kyaw xün tsh'ing rin,
Yen vu siw vun,
Na tshü tsuy tsh'in,
Suy shiw fun shin,
Paw ta vang xun.
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"Cheng Ying!
There whereat instruct become-man
Train-arms learn-letters
Seize-hold villain-lord
Smash-head slice-corpse
Payback lost ghosts."

(to Étan, with alacrity)
Most grateful, general!

(Cheng Ying eagerly rises and hurries off with the medicine chest, this time without hesitation. He abruptly stops at the palace gate, and with renewed doubts returns falteringly to kneel before Étan.)

Cheng Ying (to Étan, kneeling)
General!
(with deep anxiety)
You you you report give Dag-Ngans-Kagh knowledge,
Turn send General Étan chase-come seize me Cheng Ying,
This this this-an orphan-child ever-without life-reason.

Étan (to Cheng Ying, imperatively)
Tsh'ing Ying!
(passionately)
Tshi tung tay t'o nyen tshang tsin,
Ts'ay shwe ü ts'yung ts'yen xwa pun,
Xiw vang lyew wo yen to un rin.
+
Cheng Ying (for Étan, imperatively)
"Cheng Ying!
(passionately)
Just wait-abide him years grow forth
Then tell him from-past history
Lest forgotten-be I this great-kindness-man."

(to Étan, with alacrity)
Most grateful, general!

(Cheng Ying rises and leaves with the medicine chest, but slows down as lingering uncertainty mounts. He stops at the palace gate, and with fresh resolve returns hurriedly to kneel before Étan.)

Cheng Ying (to Étan, with growing despair)
Enough! Enough! Enough!
General Étan you you you seize-take Cheng Ying go,
Plead-merit claim-reward,
I and Osmingti's orphan-child
Would-rather one-place body-die and-be done!

No. 12 ÉTAN'S OATH OF SECRECY (Troisième air d'Étan)

Étan (to Cheng Ying, grandiosely)
Si, trahissant vos voeux, et démentant mon zèle,
ou ma bouche ou ma main vous était infidèle,
Je le jure, et je veux, dans ces murs désolés,
voir nos malheurs communs sur moi seul assemblés.

No. 13 ÉTAN'S DEATH AND THE ORPHAN'S ESCAPE (Pantomime III/Contrapunctus III)
(With elaborate ceremony Étan kills himself with his sword, true to his word of taking Cheng Ying's secret to the grave. Horrified, Cheng Ying flees with the Orphan in his medicine chest. Curtain.)

ACT I, Scene III

(Enter Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Cheng Ying on to the proscenium. Dag-Ngans-Kagh is enraged at discovering the Orphan's escape, and issues a second forged ducal decree, ordering the seizure of all infants aged one to six months. Cheng Ying stands to one side, translating the orders into the vernacular of the audience. The curtain remains lowered.)

No. 14 THE RAGE OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH: A CRUEL DECREE (Chant with Speech)

Dag Ngans-Kagh (from the proscenium, in consternation then with increasing agitation)
Gan Kyuat gwyar gar sdyus myuns riugwch?
Pyit nyan tsugch riugwch Diagwch Gryigch kwag ngryig!
Ngarch nyag kyum pyug gmyianch tsrakh dryuan Ring Klung tik rying,
pragch Tsyuns Kwuk nubh syin hlums tik syagwch syig,
tag ragch ngarch kyug sryuriat tsyang mrukh,
kians 'yit karh twarh sum kuryams,
gyug tryuwng pyit nyan gwyugch Diagwch Gryigch kwag ngryig!
Rying nyin, ragch ngarch tryang kurikh prangch myun,
dryagch Tsyuns Kwuk nubh danch dyigch pwan suwyats tyug gragh,
'yit ngwyat tyug dyangh,
tag kyug sryuriat tagwh ngarch sryuuts pyugch tryuwng mrukh hling rying.
Gwyud tyagch dzyuan krag k'ryagch tsriamch,
kyugwch dzuk pyug r-yugw!
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Étan for-what self-murdered?
Surely escaped Osmingti's orphan-child!
I as-now compelled false-issue Lord-Duke's edict,
have dukedom-within new-added little bastards all for me seize-sweep take-forth,
see each-one cut thrice-sword,
their-midst surely be Osmingti's orphan-child!
Order men, for me spread-post proclamation,
have dukedom-within only-be half-year below,
one-month above,
all seize-sweep to my headquarters-midst t'come hear-orders.
Offenders whole-family sentence-beheading,
nine-clans none remain!"

(Exit Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Cheng Ying as the curtain rises on Alsingo's hut in the mountains, peaceful and remote from political strife. Alsingo is alone, dressed like a robed scholar in old Chinese scrolls, or like a figure from the clichéd bucolic landscapes found in Rococo chinoiserie decoration. His movements are graceful and precious, the poses out of Watteau, with preening and gliding where Étan had stomped and strutted. The ensuing aria is staged as if it were part of a Baroque fête.)

No. 15 ALSINGO'S MEDITATION (Cavatina Alsingo)

ALSINGO (alone, in contemplative mood)
Nel cammin di nostra vita,
Senza i rai del Ciel cortese
Si smarrisce ogni alma ardita,
Trema il cor, vacilla il piè.
A compir le belle imprese
L'arte giova, il senno ha parte;
Ma vaneggia il senno e l'arte
Quando amico il Ciel non è.

No. 16 CHENG YING'S PROPOSAL (Tonal Recitation, Secco Recitative, and Accompanied Recitative)

(Enter Cheng Ying.)

Cheng Ying (to Alsingo, knocking and speaking through the door)
Cheng-Ying begs-audience.

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, gravely from within)
Ts'ing tsin.
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, gravely)
"Please-enter."

(Cheng Ying enters the hut and bows to Alsingo.)

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, gravely from within)
Tsh'ing Ying, ni lai yiw xo shr?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, gravely)
"Cheng Ying, you come have what business?"

(to Alsingo, with deference)
Humble-one see Old-Minister be-in this Great-Peace Village, special-come mutual-visit.

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, unctuously, with feigned innocence)
Tsz ts'yung wo pa kon tshr xuw, tshung tsay fu muy xaw mo?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, unctuously, with feigned innocence)
"Ever-since I quit-office thereafter, various ministers each good, were-they?"

(to Alsingo, with growing warmth)
Ah! This not-equal Old-Minister in-office time-period; as-now Dag-Ngans-Kagh holds-all power, compare past-usage all not-same indeed!

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, with sudden vehemence)
T'o pu lyem pu kung, pu xyaw pu tshung, tan tshr xuy pa Tshew Shwaw ts'yen kya sha ti ko tshue lyew tshung!
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, with sudden vehemence)
"He not-pure, not-just, not-virtuous, not-loyal, but-only able to-have Osmingti's whole-clan murdered so-to extinguish seed!"

(for Alsingo)
Old-Minister not-know: Lucky-that August-Heaven has eyes—Osmingti's-clan yet-not extinguished!

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, with some impatience)
Mon mun lyang tsyen sam pay ü k'uw, tshü tsin sha tshue, Tsh'ing Ying xu pu sz? Fu ma ton taw tsz vun, kung tshü k'ün tay ki sz, xwan yiw shi mo tshung tsay no li?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, with some impatience)
"Whole-house noble-commoner three-hundred-plus mouths slain-all killed-off: Cheng-Ying why didn't you-die? Osmingti short-blade self-slit, Arfisa skirt-sash hung-dead: Still-be whatever seed in what-place?"

(to Alsingo)
Old-Minister not-know: Osmingti's-wife Lord-Duke's-sister was widowed-pregnant, went ducal-palace hide. If lucky and boy, I serve him. Should girl be, I calmly die then! Stayed not-long and Arfisa conceived borne boy. Dag-Ngans-Kagh hear it, search in palace, Arfisa put child trouser-midst, prayed-saying: 'Osmingti-clan extinct be, thou criest; if not extinct be, thou no sound.' When search child, was no sound!

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, without expression)
Rü kim yen ku rr k'yaw tsay no li?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, without expression)
"And-now this orphan-child then in what-place?"

(to Alsingo)
Old-Minister not-know: Arfisa near-death-time had this orphan-child entrusted to Cheng-Ying, wait-till become-man grow-big, for father-mother avenge-crime cleanse-hate.

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, more intently)
Pu tshi k'o yiw rin kiw ti tsh'ü lai mo?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, more intently)
"Don't-know is-there person rescue out-forth, is-there?"

(to Alsingo)
Old-Minister not-know: Osmingti near-death-time, General Étan told-him quickly begone. Osmingti not willing, said: 'My-lord must not let-end ancestral offerings, I die-then unhating.' Étan agreed-promised. I Cheng-Ying carrying this orphan-child, Étan released me out-through palace-gate, self-stabbed and died. As-now taking this orphan-child no-place conceal, I special-come fleeing-seeking Old-Minister.

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, with more intensity)
No ku rr kim tsay xo tsh'ü?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, with more intensity)
"That orphan-child now in what-location?"

(Cheng Ying opens the medicine chest to reveal to Alsingo the hidden infant within.)

(to himself, with relief)
Thank Heaven-Earth, Little-Master still sleeping so!

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, while regarding the Orphan in the chest with both wonderment and horror)
Yen xay rr vi shung shr tshue lyew ts'in ts'i,
xway tsho shr mye lyew tsu tsung.
T'o fu ts'in tsham shiw tsay ün yang,
t'o nyang xo siw tsay kim tshung.
Ni taw t'o shr ko paw fu mu ti tshin nam tsz;
wo taw lay tsay shr ko fang ye nyang ti syew ye tshung!
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, with wonderment and horror)
"This baby-child unborn-time, exterminated family-kin,
Breasting-time, extinguished ancestral-line.
His father decapitated in beheading-place
His mother expired-prisoner in secluded-space.
You say he is an avenging-father-mother true-man-male;
I say-forth, rather he's a hurting-father-mother little scoundrel!"

(to Alsingo)
Old-Minister not-know: That Dag-Ngans-Kagh, because escaped Osmingti's orphan-child, Ducal-realm small-ones all arrested taken-forth, will hurt-harm natural-lives!

Alsingo (to himself, overcome with loathing and outrage)
Shuy sz yen van rin xun,
ts'yen rin xyem,
yi rin tshung?!
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, with loathing and outrage)
"Who's like this myriad-man-hated
Thousand-man-resented
Single-man-respected?!"

(to Alsingo)
Firstly repay Osmingti everyday kind-treatment-debt; secondly must-save dukedom small-infant lives.

(lifting up the infant—who is shabbily clothed—out of the medicine chest and giving him to Alsingo)
Consider Cheng-Ying has-born one son, yet-to pass full-month.

(To Alsingo's surprise, Cheng Ying lifts out of the medicine chest a second infant, swaddled in rich attire. The horrible truth is by now obvious: The second infant is Cheng Ying's own newborn son disguised as Osmingti's orphan and intended for Dag-Ngans-Kagh's vengeance.)

Cheng Ying (to Alsingo)
False-dress-make Osmingti's orphan-child, till Old-Minister only-say Cheng Ying hiding orphan-child, have us father-son two-persons one-spot body-die. Old-Minister slow-slowly raise-bring-up orphan-child, give his father-mother revenge-wrong: Would-be not fine indeed?

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, gravely weighing each word)
Li ku ü sz shü nan?
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, gravely weighing each word)
"Raise-orphan, and death—which harder?"

(to Alsingo, fearfully)
Death easy, raise-orphan hard indeed!

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, solemnly)
Tshew shr syen kün ü tsz xuw, tsz k'yang uy k'i nan tshia, ü uy k'i yi tshia: Ts'ing syen sz.
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, solemnly)
"Osmingti's forebears treated thee well, thou must do that-hard-one, I do that-easy-one: Let-me first die."

(Alsingo has been slowly approaching Cheng Ying, and the two men finally exchange infants. The ensuing aria is staged as if it were part of a Baroque fête.)

No. 17 ALSINGO EXHORTS CHENG YING (Aria di bravura Alsingo)

Alsingo (to Cheng Ying, rousingly)
Re non sei, ma senza regno
Già sei grande al par d'un re.
Quando è bella a questo segno,
Tutto trova un'alma in sé.

No. 18 ALSINGO SACRIFICES TO THE SPIRITS OF HIS ANCESTORS (Pantomime III/Chaconne I: "Catalogue d'oiseaux vivaldiens")
(Exit Cheng Ying with the true Orphan in his medicine chest. Alsingo, left alone on the cliffside, watches the passage from nightfall to daybreak—the last he shall witness—and awaits the return of Cheng Ying with Dag-Ngans-Kagh. With gravity and reverence, with infinite patience over the minutiae of ritual, he performs the final rites of homage to his ancestors, to whom he gives an account of the heroic death that will cover them in glory.)

No. 19 FINALE I—ALSINGO'S DEATH (Reprise de l'Ouverture/Trio with Speech and Tonal Recitation)

(Enter Cheng Ying and Dag-Ngans-Kagh as dawn breaks, with Cheng Ying leading the way.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (shouting at Alsingo)
Luwch p'yit pyag, nyugch pragch kwag ngryig dzang dzugch narh lyugch? K'urats tyagw k'lyuuts mrukh, myurians dyuw' ging pyap. Ngarch kians riugwch ngwians kwag ngryig dzyugwh pyug rugw ngarch pyug nugwch rarch. Pragch ngwians 'yit kays syagwch ngyap tyungch twarh riugwch sum kuryams, ngut tik pyug t'yungh riugwch ngarch gbying sring skryagch ngyuans rarch!
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh, shouting at Alsingo)
Old-base-man! You! put! orphan-child! hidden!-in! what-place?! Quick! confess! out-forth! Avoid-suff'ring! punishment-law! I've! seen! now! this! orphan-child! then! unwitting! am! no! more! vexed! Have! this! sin-gle! little! bastard! severed! thrice-sword! how! could! not! fulfil! my! whole! being's! desire?!

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh has found the hidden "Orphan" and, gloating over the imminent completion of his cruel designs, stabs it three times. Alsingo helplessly watches the innocent's fate and its father's mute suffering.)

Alsingo (to himself)
Ya! Kyen xay rr wo xye paw.
No yi ko k'u k'u xaw xaw,
Yen yi ko huen huen tsyew tsyew,
Lyen wo ye tshen tshen yew yew.
Ya! Syang xay rr li rü ts'aw,
Taw kim ri k'ya shi tshew,
Taw xya tsh'ü tshim tam rew,
K'ung shung tshang wang k'ü law.
Ya! Kyen Tsh'ing Ying sim sz re yiw kyew,
Luy tshü rr bu kam tuy rin p'aw,
Puy ti li vun lyew.
Muy lay yiw ko she di ts'in shung ku rü k'i sam taw.
+
Cheng Ying (for Alsingo, to himself)
Ah see child lies blood-pool
That-a-one cry-cry howl-howl
This-a-one cringe-cringe break-break
Even I too shake-shake quake-quake
Ah think child leave cot-straw
To this day just ten morns
Knife-point there how beg-spare
Blank life grown vain laboured
Ah see Cheng Ying's heart like hot oil poured
Tear-pearls not dare to men show
Background-midst expunged.
No reason forsaken own-born bone-flesh eat thrice sword.

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to himself)
Tsuk gwyarh dryagw kang tryuwng duk hian' Diagwch Sungrawk, pyug rugw ngarch syum tryuwng sring p'yunch. Nyag kyum syawkh glyah riugwch ngwians tum' muring ngrag, pyang dzœ dyigch gwyiangch myag gugh hnguryuns. Pragch ngwians 'yit karh syagwch ngyap tyungch twarh riugwch sum kuryams, ngut tik pyug t'yungh riugwch ngarch gbying sring skryagch ngyuans rarch: 'Yit kuryams! Lyangch kuryams! Sum kuryams!
+
Alsingo (to himself)
Wo ts'i sün sz xuw p'yen xo law,
Yen xay rr yi suy sz xuw p'yen tshi syew.
Am lyang ko yi tsh'ü shin vang,
Law ti ko van tay ming p'yew.
(to Cheng Ying, with passion)
Wo tshü fu ni ko xuw sz ti Tsh'ing Ying,
Xiw pye lyew xung vang ti Tshew Shwaw.
Tsh'ang taw shr kwang yim kwo k'ü ti tsi,
Yen k'iw paw fu ti tsaw.
Tsyang no sz van kwa ts'yen taw,
Ts'i maw yew k'ing k'ing di su fang lyew.
+
Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Alsingo by turns)
Because! Court-life-midst!...I seventy die now would so old...sole! shone! Osmingti!...This child one year die then still think young...Couldn't! help! my! heart-midst! born! rage!...We two-ones one-place body-gone. As!...Leaving,...now!...leaving a myriad-ages fame told...uprooted!...I enjoin you the later-dying Cheng Ying...this! tiny!-bud-sprout!...don't forget crooked-killed Osmingti...So! then! is! forever! no! hate! Make-plain that light-shade go-by so hasty/ Wrong-doing payback early. Have that-thing ten-thousand-slice thousand-hatchet/ Must never light-lightly clean-go yet! One-sword! Two-sword! Three-sword!

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh runs Alsingo through with his sword three times as Cheng Ying looks away. Alsingo falls dead. Dag-Ngans-Kagh beheads Alsingo's lifeless body. He then skewers the dead baby with his sword and with his other hand grabs Alsingo's severed head by its top-knot. Then Cheng Ying and Dag-Ngans-Kagh—with his gory trophies—move to the proscenium for the final lines as the curtain falls and the house lights gradually brighten.)

No. 20 DAG-NGANS-KAGH TRIUMPHANT (Percussive Rant with Speech)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (loudly declaiming to audience from proscenium)
Tangh dyegch pyug tsyinch dzying,

Cheng Ying (translating for Dag-Ngans-Kagh in conversational tone to audience)
"If, at the time, you don't exhaust an impulse..."

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
Kwarh gu'h k'ung dagw k'yits.

Cheng Ying
"...you'll just be cross with yourself later on—in vain."

(Immediate blackout after Cheng Ying's last word. Dag-Ngans-Kagh and Cheng Ying quickly exit unnoticed before the house lights come on again for the ensuing pause. )

END OF ACT I

INTERVAL

ACT II, Scene I

No. 21 DAG-NGANS-KAGH NAMES HIS HEIR (Percussive Rant and Chant with Speech)
(The curtain remains lowered. Fifteen years have passed since the events represented in the first act. Dag-Ngans-Kagh—now about seventy-five, extravagantly costumed as before but grotesquely aged of visage, the hair and beard obscenely white, like a Chinese Dorian Gray with his moral corruptions made flesh—dodders onto the proscenium supported by Cheng Ying on one side and an intricately carved staff on the other. As in previous acts, Cheng Ying is played both by a mime—now also visibly older—and a physically unaltered speaking actor who stands to one side to deliver Cheng Ying's own lines and translate the other characters' Chinese lines into the vernacular of the audience.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (declaiming to audience from proscenium, curtain down, but with a more coarsened and debilitated voice than before)
Sdyus' dzyung sriat riugwch Diagwch Gryigch kwag ngryig…
(tending to repeat himself as the senile do)
sriat riugwch Diagwch Gryigch kwag ngryig,

Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh in the vernacular of the audience, the voice now halting and quivering from old age)
"Since I killed Osmingti's orphan son,

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
k'arch mtsuw gyiup ngagch n-in kwang klyiangch rarch… gyiup ngagch n-in kwang klyiangch rarch.

Cheng Ying
"the vicissitudes of fifteen years have come and gone.

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
Ngarch tangh n-in gyunch r-yuwk sgwyin…ngarch gyunch r-yuwk sgwyin,

Cheng Ying
"I was aged nearly sixty at the time,

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
dyangh myag tsyugch slyuh…myag tsyugch slyuh.

Cheng Ying
"and I was still without a son and heir.

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
Glying 'Uring dyigch ngarch syum pyuwk tyug nyin…dyigch ngarch syum pyuwk tyug nyin,

Cheng Ying
"Cheng Ying was my loyal follower,

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
dzyugwh tsyang Glying 'Uring tik gukh' ngryig…tsyang Glying 'Uring tik gukh' ngryig,

Cheng Ying
"so I took Cheng Ying's little boy…

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
ragch ngarch tsak kays ngyayh ngryig…tsak karh ngyayh ngryig;

Cheng Ying
"…to bring up as my own son;

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
kwarh mkikh ragch ngarch…kwarh mkikh:

Cheng Ying
"I have named him to succeed me:

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
Ngwians gukh' nryig kwyung mragch tagwch gyang ryugch ngarch…kwyung mragch tagwch gyang ryugch ngarch,

Cheng Ying
"In shooting and riding this boy turns out to be my match;

Dag-Ngans-Kagh
st'yik dzœ gwyangch kurawh glyang tryuwng ryanch slyup kwyung mragch k'yabch riugwch!

Cheng Ying
"To the training ground he's headed now to practice shooting and riding!"

No. 22 THE ORPHAN'S MARTIAL PROWESS (Ritournelle Équestre)
(An equestrian ritornello paints the Orphan's skills in the military arts.)

No. 23 THE ORPHAN MUSES ALONE (Phantasie mit Lied)
(When the curtain rises, the Orphan—Osmingti's infant son now grown to a youth of fifteen—is wandering alone in a dark wood, where he has strayed far from the training ground. In the clearing are the ruins of funerary statuary and stele in the antique Chinese style. Cheng Ying knows this is his daily haunt, and at the start of the scene may be glimpsed awaiting him there furtively, holding a painted scroll rolled up in the Chinese manner. The Orphan is dressed and coiffeured in the Prussian military fashion of the age of Frederick the Great, austerely smart, with archaic hunting weapons—bow and arrow, or perhaps crossbow or musket—strung at his back. His solitary musings are filled with the characteristic disquiet of male adolescence: ambivalence towards paternal authority, and vague yearnings for a life of action and a higher destiny.)

Orphan (to himself, dreamily)
Geschlafen hab' ich nicht, geschlummert nur.
So will ich eilen, Rühmliches zu tun.
Was ich so lang entbehrt, das werd' ich haben,
Und eigen haben.
Sag' mir, wann kommt mein Vater, der mich heut
Nach seiner Stadt zurückführt?
In der bewegten Seele ging mir auf und ab,
Was alles ich heut zu erwarten habe.
Vergnügen sucht der Mann sich in Gefahren,
Und ich will bald ein Mann sein.
Die Waffen meines Vaters ruhen lange.

Frei war noch mein Herz von Rach' und Grimme:
Denn mir ist kein Unrecht widerfahren.
Nicht wahr, wen die Götter lieben,
Den führen sie zur Stelle, wo man sein bedarf?
O warum ist man Kind! Warum entfernt
Zur Zeit, wo solche Hilfe nötig ist!

(He takes out the hunting weapon strung at his back.)

Seit meiner ersten Jugend
Gefiel er mir vor allen Waffen wohl,
Die an den hohen Pfeilern hangen.
Er ist nun mein, ich führ' ihn mit mir fort,
Wenn ich den Vater nach der Stadt begleite.
(apostrophising his brandished weapon)
Doch wenn ich dich einst bändige,
—Ihr Götter, gebt es bald!—
Dann hol' ich aus seinen hohen Wolken
Den sichern Adler herunter.

No. 24 CHENG YING SHOWS THE ORPHAN A PAINTED SCROLL (Contrapunctus IV/Tonal Recitation and Arioso)
(Cheng Ying has allowed himself to be seen by the Orphan—as if by chance—in this desolate spot. He appears lost in thought and weighed down with care.)

Cheng Ying (to himself, pensively, for the Orphan to overhear)
Heart-core unbounded cares,
Not-yet dare full-clear tell.

Orphan (to Cheng Ying, with tender concern)
Yin shim ti yem luy tshü,
K'i tsh'ang xü?
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Reason what-for hide tear-pearls?
Breathe long sigh?"
(to the Orphan, slowly unrolling a painted scroll for him to examine)
I as-now took from-past crooked-dying loyal-ministers virtuous-generals paint-into single handscroll.

Orphan (in wonderment as he examines the scroll)
Shiw yin tsho kung xyen yaw tsiw ton taw tshü.
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Hands drawing bowstring, poisoned-wine, short-blade punishment."
(to the Orphan, explaining the scene of Osmingti's suicide)
Who'd think duke's kinsman Osmingti short-blade stab-die?

Orphan (unrolling the scroll to the scenes with Cheng Ying and Arfisa)
Yen yi ko fu tsho yaw syang‿rr kuy fu,
Yen yi ko paw tsho syew xay rr kyaw fu.
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"This person carrying medicine-chest kneeling-down,
This person embracing small infant entrusting."
(to the Orphan, explaining the scene of Arfisa's entrusting the infant Orphan to Cheng Ying)
This Arfisa took orphan entrusted that-one doctor.

Orphan (further unrolling the scroll to the scene of Arfisa's death, which he finds particularly affecting)
K'o lyen tsh'wen tshü tay ü lyang kya fu!
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Pitiable wearing-pearls bearing-jade honourable-family woman!"
(to the Orphan, explaining the scene of Arfisa's suicide)
Then took skirt-sash self-hung and died.

Orphan (further unrolling the scroll to the scene of Cheng Ying's encounter with Étan)
Tshim yiw yiw ko tsyang kün…
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Why again there's a general..."
(to the Orphan, beginning to explain Cheng Ying's encounter with Étan)
That doctor clasping this orphan, encounters Étan, search-out orphan forth.

Orphan (proceeding to the scene of Étan's suicide)
…tsz vun xye mu xu?
(in German pronunciation, groaning at the sacrifices recounted)
Ach!
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"...self-stab blood turbid!"
(to the Orphan, explaining Cheng Ying's and Alsingo's sacrifices)
That-one doctor took very-own baby false-dress contrived orphan-child, sent to Alsingo's place, informed that dressed-in-red-man got-to-know.

Orphan (further unrolling the scroll to the scene of Dag-Ngans-Kagh's encounter with Alsingo)
Yen tsh'wen xung ti p'i fu tsyang tsho yen pay sü ti lay uw rü.
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"This dressed-in-red of-a fellow seizing this white-beard-one forth beat-shame!"
(to the Orphan, explaining the false orphan's gruesome fate)
Chased-out that bogus Osmingti's orphan forth, slice-did thrice-sword!

Orphan (reaching the scroll's end and shuddering as if at a premonition)
Yen yi kya‿rr ro ü wo kwan ts'in xo...
+
Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"This-one family if with me related be..."
(to the Orphan, in an ominous undertone)
You still don't know then? Osmingti was your father, Arfisa was your mother, that dressed-in-red-one then is evil-minister Dag-Ngans-Kagh, I am keep-orphan throw-son old Cheng Ying, then-that Osmingti's orphan-child must be you!

(As each of the dead has his tale told, he appears walking there in the forest with the wounds and weapons of his mortal injuries, ghostly pale and bloodstained, his movements weightless and arduously slow. Cheng Ying unobtrusively withdraws from the scene, and there is a striking change in lighting for the ensuing Quintet. Only when they begin to sing their laments does the Orphan see each of the apparitions in turn: Arfisa pleading with her husband in vain to kill her, Alsingo bemoaning the shattered quiet of his old age, Osmingti in his death throes calling on the Orphan to avenge his ancestors, Étan recounting the carnage that befell Osmingti's clan. Gradually, others from among the three hundred victims of Dag-Ngans-Kagh's cruelty—including old men and children—appear in the background, in the same pallid and mutilated condition.)

No. 25 THE ORPHAN ENCOUNTERS THE SHADES OF THE SORROWING DEAD (Quinteto)

Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti, in Spanish)
Yo temía que mi brazo
Débil y mal seguro no acertase
Á herir sin turbacion mi proprio seno.

Orphan (to himself, in German)
Elender! Elender!—was that ich?—ja, das ist mein Gewinn.
O Tod! O Tod! Herab!—ach! alles ist dahin.

Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti)
Tú, con menor peligro, mas sereno,
Priva á tu fiel Esposa de la vida;

Orphan (to himself)
So bist du denn dahin, du Freude meines Lebens?
Was hab'ich doch gehofft? ach! alles war vergebens.

Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti)
Y bañado en su sangre, al lado de ella
Sabrás morir. En mi postrer momento
Abrace yo á mi Esposo.
+
Shade of Alsingo (to himself, in Italian)
A sì barbaro colpo
Cede la mia costanza.
Astri inclementi,
Di qual colpa è castigo
La mia vecchiezza?

Orphan (to himself)
Elender, der ich bin! zu Hölen will ich fliehen
Und immerdar dem Blick der Sonne mich entziehen.
+
Shade of Alsingo (to himself)
Ah! sia de' giorni miei
Questo l'estremo dì.
Per chi, per chi vivrei,
Se il mio signor morì?
+
Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti)
Y bañado en su sangre, al lado de ella
Sabrás morir. En mi postrer momento
Abrace yo á mi Esposo.

Shade of Osmingti (to the Shade of Arfisa, in English, refusing his assistance in her death)
Oh! never—never—never—
Hence let me bear this fatal instrument.
It is too late—I die—alas! I die—
+
Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti)
En mi postrer momento
Abrace yo á mi Esposo.
+
Shade of Alsingo (to himself)
Ah! sia de' giorni miei
Questo l'estremo dì.
Per chi, per chi vivrei,
Se il mio signor morì?

Orphan (to the Shade of Osmingti)
Unmenschlicher, du kommst und störest meine Ruh'.
O! warum schlossest du nicht längst die Augen zu?
Er hinterging mich. Ah! wie könnt'es moglich seyn?
Ich wäre—tödte mich, du namenlose Pein.
+
Shade of Osmingti (to the Orphan, with emphasis)
Thou noble youth, now put forth all your strength,
And let heav'n's vengeance brace each sinew.—The shades
Of your great ancestors now rise before thee,
Heroes and demi-gods!—Aloud they call.
+
Shade of Arfisa (to the Shade of Osmingti)
Y bañado en su sangre, al lado de ella
Sabrás morir. En mi postrer momento
Abrace yo á mi Esposo.
+
Shade of Alsingo (to himself)
Per chi, per chi vivrei,
Se il mio signor morì?
Ah! sia de' giorni miei
Questo l'estremo dì.
A sì barbaro colpo
Cede la mia costanza.
Astri inclementi,
Di qual colpa è castigo
La mia vecchiezza?
+
Shade of Étan (to himself, in French)
De ce nouveau carnage
qui pourra retracer l'épouvantable image?
Son épouse, ses fils sanglants et déchirés…
(to the Orphan, in French)
Que vous dirai-je? Hélas! Leurs têtes exposées
du vainqueur insolent excitent les risées,
tandis que leurs sujets, tremblant de murmurer,
baissent des yeux mourants qui craignent de pleurer.

(With a fearful moan, the Orphan swoons in grief and terror. Cheng Ying suddenly reappears, just in time to catch the fainting body in his arms. The apparitions—whether ghosts or hallucinations—abruptly vanish with the return of normal lighting.)

No. 26 THE ORPHAN SWEARS VENGEANCE ON HIS ANCESTRAL FOE (L'Einschnitt/Duet with Tonal Recitation, Offstage Chorus, and Cabaletta)

Cheng Ying (to the still unconscious Orphan in his arms, gently but firmly)
Young Master, awaken!

Offstage Cries of Vengeance (in German)
Rache!

Cheng Ying
Young Master, awaken!

Orphan (to himself in German, in fits and starts as he regains consciousness, and by now heedless of Cheng Ying's addresses)
Was soll ich thun?—wohin?
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache!

Cheng Ying (wielding the rolled-up scroll)
I today recount to you then,

Orphan
ha! schrecklich! Flieh, Elender!
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache! Rache!

Cheng Ying
You therefore tight-tight remember!

Orphan
Flieh, oder—
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache!

Cheng Ying (pointedly gesturing to the scroll)
Osmingti bequeath-speech: "I if die after…"

Orphan
Ich bin hier, du meines Bluts Verschwender!
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache!

Cheng Ying
"…you take-on a small-brat-child then, give our three-hundred mouths avenge-crime!"

Orphan
Ha! Tödte mich noch auch,
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache!

Cheng Ying (to the Orphan in his own words, having put the scroll away)
Cold-palace old-mother hang-rafter choke,
Penal-court own-father draw-blade die.

Orphan
tödte mich noch auch, du meines Vaters Feind!
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache! Rache!

Cheng Ying
Grudge-hate till-now still-not repaid,

Orphan
Mit seiner Asche sey mein Tropfen Blut vereint!
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache! Rache! Rache!

Cheng Ying
Vain-make men-midst great-whole-man!

Orphan
Hier ist die Brust, Barbar! durchbohr' sie; stoß mich nieder,
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache! Rache! O Rache!

Cheng Ying
Come tomorrow Young Master surely seize-hold this old-rogue,

Orphan
Du Mörder meines Stamms, du Mörder meiner Brüder!
+
Cries of Vengeance
O Rache! O Rache! O Rache!

Cheng Ying
I must follow-behind close-alert go-forth.
This-day grown-finished you Osmingti's branch-leaf,
+
Orphan
Verschling, o Erde! mich, eröffne dich mit Flammen!
+
Cries of Vengeance
Rache!

Orphan
Ihr Mauern fallt herab, stürzt über mich zusammen.
+
Cries of Vengeance
O Rache! O Rache!
+
Cheng Ying
consigning my one family clip-grass kill-root done then!

Orphan
O Rache! Rache! Ja, ich will, ich muß dich hören.
+
Cries of Vengeance
O Rache! Rache! Rache!

Orphan
Was zaudert noch die Hand? wer kann die That mir wehren?
Was fürcht' ich seinen Zahn? was fürcht' ich seine Klauen?
O Rache! Rache! Ja, ich will, ich muß dich hören.
Warum besaßest du, Barbar, doch nur ein Leben?
O! hättst du Tausende, sie alle mir zu geben!

(The Orphan, consumed with fury and self-loathing, hastens away to hunt down Dag-Ngans-Kagh. Cheng Ying follows him.)

No. 27 THE ORPHAN RIDES OUT TO MEET HIS ANCESTRAL FOE (Entrescène: Reprise de la Ritournelle Équestre)
(A repeat of the earlier equestrian ritornello—with the warlike alarums from the Cabaletta overlaid—paints the Orphan's raging journey on horseback towards the city.)

ACT II, Scene II

No. 28 DAG-NGANS-KAGH RECEIVES THE HOMAGE OF THE FOREIGN AMBASSADORS (Contrapunctus V/Processional Music for Three Ensembles)
(The curtain rises on the imposing audience-hall of the ducal palace. The Chaoxian 朝鮮, Wonu 倭奴, and Tufan 吐蕃 embassies arrive in state to offer tribute to the senile Dag-Ngans-Kagh, long de facto ruler of the Duchy of Jin 晉. It is thus, at the height of his power and glory, that he is found by the Orphan who, accompanied by a wavering Cheng Ying and a retinue of armed men, intrudes on the ceremony unannounced. No guards dare hinder the advance of their feared master's foster-son. While still at some distance from the scene, the Orphan with disgust observes to Cheng Ying the pomp and luxury surrounding Dag-Ngans-Kagh.)

Orphan (aside to Cheng Ying, with seething hatred as he draws nearer to Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
Ni k'an t'o t'yen tsho xyung p'u, tshwang syerr shi xhuang.
Wo yen li tshuw ma rü liw shuy, tsh'e kyem sz ts'iw shwang, xyang ts'yen lai tu tang.
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"You see his swelling chest-breast, cloaked-in much mighty-state.
I here-with fast-steed like flowing-waters, drawing-sword like autumn-frost, go-forward forth obstruct."

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (addressing the Orphan by his familiar name upon finally his unexpected arrival)
Dag Dyin, nyugch mrukh tsak dyumh may?
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Elpenor, you come do what?"

No. 29 THE ORPHAN CONFRONTS DAG-NGANS-KAHG WITH HIS CRIMES AND SENTENCE IS PRONOUNCED (Variazioni a quattro/Trio and Chorus with Tonal Recitation and Speech)

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh in Yuan Mandarin, defiantly)
Wo pu shr T'u Tsh'ing, pu shr T'u Tsh'ing, tsay wo shr, tsay wo shr Tshew Shr ku rr!
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"I not-am Elpenor, not-am Elpenor, so I am, so I am Osmingti's orphan-child!"

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the Orphan in Zhou Chinese, with the laborious comprehension of advanced senility)
Dag Dyin, nyugch mrukh tsak dyumh may?
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Elpenor, you come do what?"

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh, his heart torn between hatred and grief)
Shi u nian ti yi tsz vang rin t'o rin fu,…
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Fifteen years' of wicked-son false-knew other-man's father,…"

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the Orphan, still uncomprehending)
Dag Dyin, nyugch mrukh tsak dyumh may?
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Elpenor, you come do what?"

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
…San pay k'uw ti yen xun fang ts'ay yiw tshü.
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"…Three-hundred mouths of wronged-souls yet-now have champion!"

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh and the Orphan have been steadily approaching each other, Cheng Ying remaining a watchful distance apart. At their point of nearest contact Dag-Ngans-Kagh, still dominated by paternal feelings, attempts to embrace the Orphan, who coldly spurns him.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the Orphan, angered and hurt by his unfilial rejection)
Dyuay ngwians puan glaw' mrukh?
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Who these-such spoke-forth?"

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh, pointing at Cheng Ying)
Shr Tsh'ing Ying taw lai.
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Was Cheng-Ying spoke-forth."

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the Orphan, incredulous and insistent on the truth)
Dyuay glaw' mrukh, dyuay ngwians puan glaw' mrukh?
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Who spoke-forth, who these-such spoke-forth?"

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh, with hysterical impatience as he grasps Cheng Ying to thrust him at Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
Shr Tsh'ing Ying, Tsh'ing Ying taw lai, ni ni ni law tsuy!
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"Was Cheng-Ying, Cheng-Ying spoke-forth, you you you old murderer!"

(Cheng Ying shows Dag-Ngans-Kagh two sets of swaddling-clothes, the rich fabrics originally worn by the real orphan, and the plain fabrics originally worn by the false orphan, which with a simple swapping gesture he shows to have been exchanged. Dag-Ngans-Kagh takes the clothes in quaking hands and repeats Cheng Ying's swapping gesture as he gazes first at Cheng Ying and then at the Orphan, who each nods assent at the truth of the account.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to himself, suddenly apprehensive for his life)
Pyug tryuwng! Ngarch kryigch tsugch tsugch tik kan dzyingh.
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh, suddenly apprehensive for his life)
"Not good! I just-be running smart-clean."

Orphan (to Dag-Ngans-Kagh, swiftly advancing and seizing hold of him)
Ni ni ni tsuw tsh'ung k'ay tsuw lan tang?
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"You you you how break-free, how resist?"

Orphan (forcing Dag-Ngans-Kagh to his knees and preparing to kill him)
Ni yen tsuy!
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Cheng Ying (for the Orphan)
"You this murderer!"

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh's guards have moved to protect their master but are outflanked and overpowered by the Orphan's men. The Orphan stares deep into the kneeling Dag-Ngans-Kagh's eyes and—with the hunting weapon of the previous scene—readies the avenging blow, but some remaining core of humanity, perhaps of filial recollection, within him is touched, and his arm freezes in mid-air.)

Orphan (to himself in German, as in a daze paralysed by the moral confusion within him)
Fern von euch wohnt die Ruh'— ach! ewig mir verloren!
Unglücklicher, du warst zu Qualen nur geboren!
O Tod! wo find ich dich? dich, der so oft verzieht,
Des Glückes Liebling sucht und den Verworfnen flieht?
Unwissend, was mich trift, will ich dann vor ihm stehn,
Und Leben oder Tod in seinen Augen spähn.

(With a final surge of physical courage Dag-Ngans-Kagh straightens himself and asks for a speedy death, but the Orphan's hesitation spells a worse fate for him. The great portals of the audience-hall have opened and the Duke's glittering court—resplendent of dress and stately of movement—enter to pronounce the terrible justice awaiting Dag-Ngans-Kagh.)

Dag-Ngans-Kagh (to the Orphan, with bitter resignation)
S-ryu' lyu' tyidh tshyigch, rud gyuw mtsuw' syuy' nyug lyu'.
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Cheng Ying (for Dag-Ngans-Kagh)
"Matters already reached this, just plead quick death and-be-done."

Chorus of Courtiers I (singing the ducal decree in Zhou Chinese)
"Nyu' kyum nyit 'yiaw mtsuw' syuy',
ngay p'yian 'yiaw nyu' mranh syuy'.
Rying nyin, lyu' nay' tsyang ngyianh dzuk ting dyang muk rya,
syih syih tik kuruay' dyang sum shnin taw,
byad nyuwk ta dzyinch,
pyang dzug duan hlyuw' k'ud hlangh,
hyuw drya hlay syuy' tik mtsuw riuw'."
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Chorus of Courtiers II (simultaneously reciting a verbatim translation of the Zhou Chinese decree into the vernacular of the audience)
"You this-day wish early-die,
I however wish you slowly-die.
Command men, for me take this criminal nail-upon Wooden-Donkey,
fine-finely chop-up three-thousand blades,
skin-flesh all gone,
only-then cut-head open-chest,
don't-let him perish early then!"

ACT II, Scene III

No. 30 FINALE II—THE EXECUTION OF DAG-NGANS-KAGH (Pantomime V/Chaconne II with Quintet and Chorus)
(To festive music the audience-hall is quickly transformed into an execution ground, where a gruesome spectacle unfolds before the ducal court: the dismemberment of Dag-Ngans-Kagh's living body in the form of a large-scale divertissement with a chorus of courtiers, a solo quintet consisting of the Orphan and the Shades of Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, and Étan, and instrumental episodes for "ballets" of the criminal's mutilated organs and body parts in reverse order of foetal generation, as explicated in the theories of ancient Chinese medicine. The dismemberment is represented by means of a giant automated effigy of Dag-Ngans-Kagh the height of the stage, with rolling eyes, unfurling tongue, heaving chest, detachable extremities, etc., and a cavernous torso that is cut open to reveal pulsating internal organs of which it is systematically disembowelled. The mechanical spectacle may be staged as an ingenious entertainment devised by Jesuit technicians in the service of the Qing emperor Gaozong—better known as Qianlong, the "philosopher-king" who corresponded with an admiring Voltaire, and who here appears enthroned where previously a European Baroque monarch was seated. Cheng Ying looks on with placid satisfaction.)

Étan (in French)
Enseignez la raison, la justice, et les moeurs.
Que la sagesse règne, et préside au courage.
¬+
Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo (in Zhou Chinese)
Slyakh kwyun 'un Tsyiunh Kwuk tlay tryam krungwh,
pura' kyan dzuk dzyuan krag dzyin' myiat myang.

Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, Étan, and Chorus of Courtiers (in Zhou Chinese)
Stik kwa ngyi ka' ming myang,
ryup bya' tsa' priadh k'yiang syangh.
Glak tik kays sryu' shrik dyang p'yaw' ming,
ryuw lya' gu nyin krungch!

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh's ears, mouth, eyes, nose, and tongue are removed—in that precise order.)

Alsingo (in Italian)
Sarà nota al mondo intero,
Sarà chiara in ogni età,
Dell'eroe di questo impero
L'inudìta fedeltà. ¬
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Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Étan (in Zhou Chinese)
Slyakh kwyun 'un Tsyiunh Kwuk tlay tryam krungwh,
pura' kyan dzuk dzyuan krag dzyin' myiat myang.

Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, Étan, and Chorus of Courtiers (in Zhou Chinese)
Stik kwa ngyi ka' ming myang,
ryup bya' tsa' priadh k'yiang syangh.
Glak tik kays sryu' shrik dyang p'yaw' ming,
ryuw lya' gu nyin krungch!

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh's blood vessels, skin and hair, muscles, flesh, and bones are removed—in that precise order.)

Arfisa (in Spanish)
Serás Maestro de equidad, de juicio,
Y de honradas costumbres.
Hoi la prudencia reine; y ella séa
Quien dirija el valor.
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Osmingti (in English)
Yet heav'n, in its own hour, can bring relief;
Can blast the tyrant in his guilty pride,
And prove the Orphan's guardian to the last.
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Orphan, Alsingo, Étan (in Zhou Chinese)
Slyakh kwyun 'un Tsyiunh Kwuk tlay tryam krungwh,
pura' kyan dzuk dzyuan krag dzyin' myiat myang.

Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, Étan, and Chorus of Courtiers (in Zhou Chinese)
Stik kwa ngyi ka' ming myang,
ryup bya' tsa' priadh k'yiang syangh.
Glak tik kays sryu' shrik dyang p'yaw' ming,
ryuw lya' gu nyin krungch!

(Dag-Ngans-Kagh's urinary bladder, stomach, gall bladder, large intestine, and small intestine are removed—in that precise order.)

Orphan (in German)
Sieh dieses Schreckenbild, du sterbliches Geschlecht;
Vernimm des Himmels Ruf, "O Menschen seyd gerecht."
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Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, Étan (in Zhou Chinese)
Slyakh kwyun 'un Tsyiunh Kwuk tlay tryam krungwh,
pura' kyan dzuk dzyuan krag dzyin' myiat myang.

Orphan, Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, Étan, and Chorus of Courtiers (in Zhou Chinese)
Stik kwa ngyi ka' ming myang,
ryup bya' tsa' priadh k'yiang syangh.
Glak tik kays sryu' shrik dyang p'yaw' ming,
ryuw lya' gu nyin krungch!
(Dag-Ngans-Kagh's heart, lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys are removed—in that precise order.)

Orphan (in German)
Sieh dieses Schreckenbild, du sterbliches Geschlecht;
Vernimm des Himmels Ruf, "O Menschen seyd gerecht."
+
Arfisa (in Spanish)
Serás Maestro de equidad, de juicio,
Y de honradas costumbres.
Hoi la prudencia reine; y ella séa
Quien dirija el valor.
+
Osmingti (in English)
Yet heav'n, in its own hour, can bring relief;
Can blast the tyrant in his guilty pride,
And prove the Orphan's guardian to the last.
+
Alsingo (in Italian)
Sarà nota al mondo intero,
Sarà chiara in ogni età,
Dell'eroe di questo impero
L'inudìta fedeltà. ¬
+
Étan (in French)
Enseignez la raison, la justice, et les moeurs.
Que la sagesse règne, et préside au courage.
+
Courtiers (in Zhou Chinese)
Slyakh kwyun 'un Tsyiunh Kwuk tlay tryam krungwh,
pura' kyan dzuk dzyuan krag dzyin' myiat myang.

All (in Zhou Chinese)
Stik kwa ngyi ka' ming myang,
ryup bya' tsa' priadh k'yiang syangh.
Glak tik kays sryu' shrik dyang p'yaw' ming,
ryuw lya' gu nyin krungch!

(The closing orchestral ritornello accompanies the following closing tableau: Amid the mass of kneeling courtiers, the Orphan moves upstage to offer Dag-Ngans-Kagh's head on a platter to the throne, from which the emperor signifies his pleasure with a nod. Downstage, Cheng Ying and the Shades of Arfisa, Osmingti, Alsingo, and Étan have been approaching each other with grave and measured step. While the Orphan kneels at the steps of the throne, Cheng Ying kneels before the four ghosts to receive the sword that will enable him to join their heroic company. At the dissonant chord which interrupts the final cadence, he kills himself with the sword. Immediate blackout and curtain.)

END OF THE OPERA