Composer & Librettist: Huang Ruo
Director: Basil Twist
Amid the many reimagined classics at this year’s Edinburgh Festivals, one stands out not from the West but from ancient China. The Book of Mountains and Seas, known in Chinese as Shanhai Jing and first transcribed in the fourth century BC, is reimagined here by Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo through the language of opera.
From the wealth of myths contained in the text, Huang selects four stories. The performance begins with the tale of Pan Gu, the giant who emerged from a cosmic egg to create the world, and whose death gave rise to sun, moon, land, animals, plants and humankind. Next comes the Spirit Bird, the drowned princess transformed after death into a bird, tirelessly attempting to fill the sea with twigs and pebbles. Then follows the legend of the Ten Suns, where Hou Yi saves the earth by shooting down nine of the ten blazing suns. Finally comes the story of Kua Fu, the giant who, in his arrogance, chases the sun, an act that leads inevitably to his destruction.
Directed by Basil Twist, Olivier Award-winning designer of My Neighbour Totoro, the staging is striking. Twelve singers from Ars Nova Copenhagen, six puppeteers, and two percussionists conjure these myths with a deceptively simple staging. The choir, their faces faintly lit by iPads holding their scores, sings in both Mandarin and an invented language that evokes the primal world of the stories, when meaning was carried more through sound than words. Puppets, lanterns, and white sheets are animated to bring forth vast seas, blazing suns, and towering giants, creating an elemental world from the most minimal tools.
The effect is both visually arresting and sonically haunting, a work that binds Eastern and Western musical traditions while holding true to the spirit of ancient Chinese storytelling. In these myths, the cycle of life is revealed with a clarity that resonates across millennia. Pan Gu’s body becoming the world reminds us that we are part of the earth’s own cycles; the Ten Suns warn against environmental catastrophe; and Kua Fu’s doomed pursuit of the sun feels eerily like our own headlong chase of technological power, AI included. In the end, The Book of Mountains and Seas suggests the oldest of truths: there is nothing new under the sun.
Runs until 15 Aug 2025
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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7
