Imagine an opera where the cast swings swords at one another or comes out in massive, complicated, culturally significant and intensely symbolic costumes. That is the essence of Beijing Opera.

On Feb. 10, the Oswego State division of the Startalk program brought classically trained Chinese opera performers to the Sheldon Hall ballroom to perform excerpts from both traditional and modern Chinese opera. The performers, all from the Confucius Institute of Chinese Opera, took part in four performances of traditional and modern Chinese theater.

“We went to the Startalk conference, where we met our friends from Binghamton, and they belong to the Confucius Institute in Binghamton,” said professor Ming-te Pan, director of the Oswego State Startalk program.

The performers offered to bring a production to Oswego to expose local residents and Oswego State students to the art form of Chinese opera.

Startalk is a language program run by the University of Maryland that receives an annual grant to operate. This workshop was the final leg of the 2017 program, according to Corrine Liao, assistant to the director of the Startalk program. It seeks to expose students to Chinese art and language, with 95 percent of the program being taught in Mandarin.

The performers moved through a series of excerpts from traditional Chinese opera first, performing the fight between the Golden Panther and the Monkey King, one of the most well-known operas in Chinese culture.

The performers, Lei Chen and Ju Wang, are undergraduate students at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing and are in the U.S. for one year, teaching students around the region through the Confucius Academy of Chinese Opera at Binghamton University.

The second performance was of The Drunken Concubine, which tells the story of an imperial concubine in the Song dynasty of the Chinese empire. In the performance, Ting Wang’s character, Lady Yang, drinks herself into a stupor following a rejection by the emperor. The performance relies on body movements to tell its story.

“Every gesture in [Beijing] opera has a meaning,” Wang said.

The next performance was two songs by internationally recognized performer Hong Zhang. The first song, The Ditty from Yimeng Mountain, is a traditional Chinese folk song. The second song was written by a Tibetan composer in 2006, praising the construction of a railroad to connect the Tibetan capital with the rest of the country.

The final performance, The Golden Beach, told the tale of a Chinese general who saved his men from death and killed the invaders that were holding them. The general’s character wore a complex costume of real peacock feathers, shoes with raised soles and four flags on the back.

The performer, Zichen He, explained that only the character of Chinese general got that costume. No foreign generals or Chinese soldiers were permitted to wear the outfit.

After the performances, He explained alongside his fellow performers that many of them had been practicing their craft from the age of 10 and were devoted to the art of Chinese opera.

The event broke into groups, with audience members asking the performers questions and traditional Chinese cuisine being served by the Auxiliary Services caterers.

This was the final event of the 2017 Oswego Startalk program, and the 2018 schedule has not yet been confirmed. The program depends on federal funding, and Pan said they must have a definite go-ahead before any planning can begin.

“We know we will get awarded and the program will run,” Pan said.

Greg Tavani | The Oswegonian