Opera japonica/Minoru Miki

Minoru Miki

Minoru Miki's new opera The Tale of Genji will receive its world premiere on June 15th, performed by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Staging is by Colin Graham who also wrote the English text. This is Miki and Graham's third major collaboration following An Actor's Revenge (London 1979, and St Louis 1981) and Joruri (St Louis 1985, and Tokyo 1988).

The Tale of Genji is Minoru Miki's seventh opera, part of an extended series of musical and dramatic works written by in a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, during the past quarter of a century. He has also composed three folk operas.

Simon Holledge met Minoru Miki at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music (Geidai) during rehearsals for a revival of Ada : An Actor's Revenge in February 2000 and talked to him about his life and work.

Simon Holledge: You were born in Tokushima on the island of Shikoku . . . what kind of music did you first hear as a child? Did you have a musical education?

Minoru MIKI: My uncle was playing the shakuhachi in my honour the day I was born! My grandmother played the koto and shamisen very well. As a child I heard Japanese music every day, but I took it for granted.

I didn't receive any music education as such until I was 15, about the time the Second World War ended. I left Tokushima and went to high school in Okayama on the mainland. I joined a male chorus group there and learnt to read music. We organized a mixed chorus. I became more and more involved in this, and suggested performing the Messiah. We hired the best soloists from Tokyo and gave the local premiere! It was very successful and fired me with great enthusiasm for music . . . Last year we had a 50th anniversary celebration when we performed it again.

Holledge: When and how did you decide that you wanted to be a composer?

MIKI: My father wanted me to go to Tokyo University, but when I took the entrance exam, in 1950, I just handed in a blank answer sheet! A teacher at my high school in Okayama suggested that I should concentrate on music, and try to enter the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music instead. I started learning the piano, and after six months I found could play the Mozart piano sonatas . . . then I could tackle the Beethoven Piano Sonata number 9! I began playing the piano just a year before entering university.

Holledge: Who were your teachers when you were studying at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music?

MIKI: Six months before I actually entered university, I started studying composition with Tomojiro Ikenouchi. I also found another teacher of orchestration called Akira Ifukube. He was writing music for films and I would spend most of the time wandering around with him . . . I also made a lot of friends while I was at Geidai at that time which proved useful later on.

Holledge: What were your main musical influences at that time?

MIKI: Stravinsky above all.

Holledge: You founded Pro Musica Nipponia [Nihon Ongaku Shudan] in 1964 and ran it for some 20 years. What was the main focus of your work?

MIKI: There had never been real ensembles of traditional Japanese instruments. Of course Gagaku existed, but its performance was limited to the court. Education in Japan dealt exclusively with western music so we didn't include Japanese instruments in our concept of music. Anyway, there were many different groups of teachers and pupils, and I thought there should be opportunities for them to play together.

Looking back it all seems very simple, but no-one wanted to do it at that time. I organized some excellent young players. However after organizing them there was no repertory for them to play! So I had to compose for them as well - for over 20 years!

I invented a new koto with first 20, and then 21, strings. The traditional instrument has 13 strings, but I thought that since the Japanese had grown larger and stronger they could handle a large instrument. In fact Keiko Nosaka now plays an instrument of up to 25 strings. These new instruments can still play music composed for the older instrument.

By coincidence, the Chinese also started to use a larger instrument and there are now 16 and 21-string koto. Surprisingly my music is now performed more there than here. In China there may be up to a million players. And the teachers there are more flexible about adopting new instruments than in Japan. But in future the Asian standard koto will surely be a 21-string instrument.

Mel Ulrich as Genji, Jessica Miller (center) as Lady Aoi, and Cheryl Evans as Lady Rokujo In Minoru Miki's The Tale of Genji. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, June 2000. Set and costume designs by Setsu Asakura.

photo ©Ken Howard 2000

Holledge: Your first opera Shunkin-sho was written in 1975. It was a great success. Hiroshi Oga said that it was one of the most important achievements of the Nihon Opera Kyokai. Why did you decide to start writing opera at that time? What was Shunkin-sho about?

MIKI: Shunkin-sho was my first opera, but I had always been interested in music drama, going back to my singing days in Okayama. In 1963 I wrote an operetta called 'Husband the Hen' based on a story by Maupassant. It was part of a triple bill including an a capella chorus piece and a requiem. These works were serious so the idea was to write a comic piece to serve as light relief, rather like a kyogen.

One reason I didn't write more for the stage was that I didn't feel comfortable composing for standard Tokyo Japanese. Tokushima is culturally part of Kansai and I grew up speaking Kansai Japanese. One of the reasons I accepted the commission to write Shunkin-sho was that the setting was in Kansai. Shunkin-sho is also about a blind koto teacher and I was particularly interested in the instrument at that time, composing many pieces for it and for Keiko Nosaka, the true genius of the koto.

Shunkin-sho is set in the 19th century. It was performed in Japanese at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland in 1990. It was a big success and there were more than 30 very positive newspaper reviews.

Holledge: There are different versions of the ending of Shunkin-sho. Was it your intention to leave the choice up to the performers, to the director? Are you happy with either ending?

MIKI: Well, actually no one did it exactly as I wanted!. I wanted to end with a duet, sung with great intensity, then applause - then 'Shunnoden' [A women's chorus, one of the highlights of the opera] with a dance just before the actual curtain!

Holledge: Your second opera, Ada: An Actor's Revenge (1979) was premiered in London and your third opera Joruri (1985) was done in St Louis? Both of these operas were set to English texts but were based on historical Japanese themes. How did that come about?

MIKI: Yes. Ada: An Actor's Revenge is set in the 18th century, Joruri is 17th century . . . Colin Graham and I thought we could work together to create something new. For me writing music to an English text was a pleasure because I could compose melody without having to adhere to the special pitch and dialect demands of the Japanese language etc. and my opera could be international.

Holledge: You translated Ada: An Actor's Revenge back into Japanese for the premiere here. Was that difficult?

MIKI: Translating back from English to Japanese was very difficult. The rule is that the Japanese voice is pitched at two levels, high and low. This is completely different from English. So it was a lot of trouble.

Because of this problem, when I composed Joruri, and again when I composed The Tale of Genji, I worked on both the English and the Japanese versions at the same time. This took a lot of time, but it enable me to write different melodic lines and create my own personal atmosphere for each version.

Holledge: Using traditional themes such as the koto (in Shunkin-sho) and kabuki (in Ada: An Actor's Revenge) was very successful . . .

MIKI: Joruri, based on a 17th-century story, was the most successful. But the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis production at the Nissei Theatre in Tokyo was so perfect that other Japanese companies never thought they could equal it! But it shows that if we prepare carefully, we can create new affinities between different traditions. Before you do it . . . people always say it's impossible!

Holledge: You are also wrote some folk-operas starting with the Monkey Poet (1983) which was translated by Colin Graham. What was the inspiration for these works?

MIKI: I had composed operas on Japanese history, but I wanted to create music theatre for other purposes as well. In 1986, I founded a small opera theatre called Uta-za, and starting to create a folk opera series for an ordinary public.

Holledge: Wakahime followed in 1992. This was grander in scale, dealing with ancient Japanese history, composed to a Japanese text. What attracted you to this subject?

MIKI: I had finished an opera trilogy based on Edo period stories. I was keen to compose my next opera using an ancient story, depicting Japan as an international country albeit in ancient times. I hoped to write a grand opera like Aida. Wakahime is set in the 5th century.

Shizuka and Yoshitsune, Kamakura 1993

Holledge: And then came Shizuka and Yoshitsune (1993) a medieval subject . . .

MIKI: When we were rehearsing Wakahime, Ray Nakanishi who wrote the libretto for Wakahime, pressed me to compose an opera on the 12th century story of Shizuka and Yoshitsune for the opening of the Kamakura Art Center in 1993, of which he was to be the General Director.

I decided I would create a whole series of operas on Japan history. Later I had the chance of working on two one-act operas or 'twin operas' set in the 15th century. The River Sumida and Kusabira were set to No and Kyogen texts. [First performed in a traditional No theatre in 1995.]

Holledge: You have just completed your seventh opera, the Tale of Genji which again is in English and will be premiered in St Louis on June 15. What drew you to this subject? The Tale of Genji is well known in the west through the translations of Arthur Waley and Edward Seidensticker. Is that why you thought it would be suitable as an English opera?

MIKI: After the premiere of Joruri, Colin Graham and the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis wished to commission a new opera from me, but I was busy writing the other three operas, the folk operas and several orchestral pieces. . . also finding English materials for Graham was very difficult. But finally we decided on Genji as the best story for our collaboration.

Andrew Wentzel (centre) with (l. to r.) Cheryl Evans, Carleton Chambers, Josepha Gayer, Elizabeth Comeax, Mel Ulrich , Jessica Miller, Richard Troxell in Minoru Miki's The Tale of Genji. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, June 2000. Set and costume designs by Setsu Asakura.

photo ©Ken Howard 2000

Holledge: More than any other Japanese opera composer you have reached out to an international (especially an English-speaking) audience. Why is such an audience important for you?

MIKI: English is the most international language now. As a composer I write music for people all over the world.

Holledge: Thank you.

glossary:

shakuhachi reed instrument made of bamboo, sometimes referred to as a fipple flute, noted for its plangency

koto multi-stringed long box-shaped instrument played on the floor, a kind of zither or horizontal harp, plucked not struck.

shamisen (or samisen) a three-stringed instrument rather like a stretched banjo, made of stretched cat's skin and played with an ivory plectrum.

kyogen a comic interlude in a programme of No plays

Edo period, the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate 1603-1868

gagaku court music originally from China played by a small orchestra using ancient instruments derived from the continent

Resources

Shizuka and Yoshitsune, Kamakura 1993

Online multimedia files

RealMedia format video clips of Shizuka's dance from the opera Shizuka and Yoshitsune are available from Opera japonica. There are two alternative versions:

Shizuka's dance (mono) 2.7 megabytes in size (RealMedia)

Shizuka's dance (stereo) 8.7 megabytes in size (RealMedia)

If you wish to download these files please write to Downloads@Operajaponica.org

The stereo file will obviously take considerable time to download without a fast connection.

Shizuka's dance: The extract is of the famous scene of in front of the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu Shrine in Kamakura. Shizuka was the lover (pregnant by the time of this scene) of Minamoto Yoshitsune (1159-1189). She was captured by Yoshitsune's brother and enemy the Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) and forced to dance in front of him and his wife Masako. Shizuka openly defied Yoritomo and sang of her love for the fugitive Yoshitsune. Yoritomo later killed her child and eventually hunted down Yoshitsune and forced him to commit suicide.

There is a small Real Media video clip from the opera Joruri.

Joruri 264 k (Real Media)

Acknowledgements: Opera japonica is indebted to Minoru Mimi for the Shizuka and Yoshitsune extract. The Joruri extract is courtesy of Dreamlife.

Links

Minoru Miki's own web site is at www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~m-miki/ The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is at www.opera-stl.org

Opera recordings

Joruri (in English) Opera Theatre of St. Louis, 160 minutes, recorded 1988 (Dreamlife laserdisc LSZS00186/video VFZT00918, both 14,500 yen)

Wakahime Text by Rei Nakanishi. Conducted by Tetsuya Kawahara, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. Live recording at NHK Hall, Tokyo in 1993. 146 minutes, English synopsis included (Camerata 30CM-443-4 , 2 CDs)

Bibliography

Minoru Miki (1975) Shunkin-sho Zen-on Music Company, Tokyo

Minoru Miki and James Kirkup (1979) An Actor's Revenge Faber Music, London

Minoru Miki (1989) The role of traditional Japanese instruments in three recent operas from Perspectives of New Music Volume 27, Number 2

Minoru Miki (1994) The Works of Minoru Miki Karaku-sha, Tokyo (in Japanese and English)

Note: The Tale of Genji is being performed on June 15, 17, 21, 23, 25 at the Loretto-Hilton Center at Webster University. The cast includes Mel Ulrich; Elizabeth Comeaux, Josefa Gayer, Richard Troxell and Andrew Wentzel. Steuart Bedford conducts members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Direction is by Colin Graham with sets and costumes by Setsu Asakura, and choreography by Onoe Kikushiro.

Colin Graham's libretto is based on the first part of Lady Murasaki's classic novel, The Tale of Genji, written a thousand years ago, based on life at the Japanese court, and telling the romantic story of Prince Genji, 'the Shining One', and his various love affairs.

Opera japonica is indebted to Yasuhiro Miura for his help and advice in connection with this interview, also to Mike Richter for his invaluable technical assistance.

See also The Tale of Genji Libretto by Colin Graham

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