（六） 恋人
（五）信、望、爱
（四）绑架
（三）奢侈
（二）出家
In the beginning of The Painted Veil, there is a sentence “the longest journey in the world is the distance between two people”. The Painted Veil is a 1925 novel by W. Somerset Maugham . It is also a beloved screenplay, which has been adapted into film in 1934, 1957 and 2006. According to wikipedia, “The Painted Veil is a 1934 drama film made by MGM. It was directed by Ryszard Bolesławski and produced by Hunt Stromberg from a screenplay by John Meehan, Salka Viertel, and Edith Fitzgerald, adapted from the 1925 W. Somerset Maugham novel The Painted Veil. The film stars Greta Garbo as Katrin Koerber Fane, Herbert Marshall as Dr. Walter Fane and George Brent as Jack Townsend, with Warner Oland and Jean Hersholt.” “The Seventh Sin is a 1957 film based on the 1925 novel The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. It was adapted for the screen by Karl Tunberg and drected by Ronald Neame. Vincente Minnelli was uncredited but involved in directing prior to leaving the project. Bill Travers stars as Doctor Walter Carwin and Eleanor Parker plays his wife Carol.”
The most recent adaptation is directed by John Curran and stars Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, and Liev Schreiber. “Kitty Fane (Watts) marries Dr. Walter Fane (Norton) even though she does not really love him. The Fanes move from England to China, where Dr. Fane is stationed in a government lab studying infectious disease. Kitty has an an affair with diplomat Charlie Townsend (Schreiber), and when Walter finds out, he gives her an ultimatum: come with me to the Chinese interior to assist with a cholera epidemic, or be served with divorce papers. When Charlie refuses to leave his wife for Kitty, she chooses to travel with her husband. The Fanes' marriage slowly blossoms into love as Kitty sees what a good man her husband is. She begins to assist at the local orphanage, while Walter tends to the sick and looks for a way to stop the spread of the epidemic despite resistance from the local populace. Kitty learns she is pregnant but is unsure who is the father, yet Walter remains with her. Just as the local cholera problem is resolved, diseased refugees from downriver pour into the area, forcing them to set up a refugee camp outside town. Walter contracts cholera and dies after several days. Kitty returns to London, and five years later runs into Charlie Townsend on the street as she walk with her young son. Kitty rejects his overtures and walks away.”
The story line is quite simple, comparing to the more appealing story such as The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. In many ways, these two films resemble each other: exotic setting, marriage without loves, overwhelmingly and deadly disease. However, they are foundamentally different. The Painted Veil has faith in love and in good human nature. Walter and Kitty were trapped in their marriage, but they were young and energtic and had ability to speak out their love. The cholera epidemic only made them to feel the presence of each other and the strength of each other. W. Somerset Maugham was a romantic writer in essence and he aovided the underlying conflict between the east and west, male and female, the cosmopolitian and rural life. In his world, love was human’s nature and would grow up even in the most harsh environment.
But 24 years later, Paul Bowles broke this kind of romantic fairtale by his painstakingly written work, The Sheltering Sky. The story centers on Port and Kit Moresby, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an attempt by Port and Kit to resolve their marital difficulties, is quickly made fraught by the travelers' ignorance of the dangers that surround them. During their journey, Port and Kit became intimate again but they realized the love between them was impossible. They were doomed to be alone and lonely. After they passionately made love under the bare sky, Port signed that the sky was so heavy. Port died in the journey and Kit wondered in the dessert and became slave of a young man from the dissert. They did not know each other’s language, or culture or even way of making love. They stayed together and did nothing except making love. I try very hard to understand what this means for Kit. Eventually, I come to the conclusion that the story had no faith in love, or put it differently, the author feared human being were too weak to carry on any type of love, physically or emotionally. In name of love, people become intimate and then turn into stranger. The foundamental tragedy of life was a lake of the feeling of grativity, an emotional latitude which was impossible to reach or sustain. Who can boldly claim he or she can love in the same intensity always, against our aging process and the endless suffering of life?
In the book, Bowles wrote: “Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you, that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”
Yet another 36 years later, Patrick Süskind wrote his elergy of love under the name Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. He created a unknown legend of 18 century France, a great perfumer of all time, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, “whose prodigious gift of an incomparable sense of smell and inexplicable lack of personal scent isolates him from society. Obsessed with the rich sensory world he alone inhabits, his single objective in life becomes the preservation of the perfect scent: the skin of young, beautiful virgins”.
In this story, the author did not even bother to create a love story. All the girls in the story were only instruments for Grenouille and their lives were meaningful only for their particularity in odor. In the end of the novel, Grenouille’s lack of smell was depicted as his incapable to love and to be loved. He never got an education for love and in the story, love was not a nature either. He did not have it and he did not know that he did not have it. In Grenouille’s eyes, there was no body, no beauty, and no physical attraction. The girls were purely objectives, not subjectives. In his eyes, each individual degenerated into an odor, a symbol, an element. Love and passion are simple not possible to arise by nature, but have to be induced by external force (perfume in this case). In the last scene of the film, Grenouille used the power of the perfume to control the people, who started to make love openly in the square. The intoxicate smell of the perform transformed into the most exotic sensation, which Grenouille himself was incapable of particiating. His fate is the fate of modern men, the generation who believe in science, in experiment, and belive in their unique right to the world. However, love is already out of their equation, even though people believe otherwsie.
In the Magic Flute, Tamio searches for spiritual love and Papageno tries to find his mate. Deep down in Mozart’s mind, there is the believe in the existence of love and people’s ability to capture their love through their effort and sacrifice. Two hundred years later, we stand in the waste land of emotion and cry for our lack of willingness to love. “And yet it all seems limitless”.
Dec 21st: Picked up Chen at Penn Station; had dinner at Korean town; went to see The Painted Veil at Lincoln Center Plaza Cinema; chated till 3:00am in the morning; saw her off to London;
Dec 23rd: helped Yan to move out and had breakfast together; went to Fang’s home for lunch and met with Li Xia and Wang Yijia (brought two shoes from Aerosoles); went to Penn Station to pick up Mingwei; Met Xu at home; Went out with Mingwei and Xu to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center; chat till morning;
Dec 24th: had late brunch; went to central park and met beautiful weather in the Park; spent couple of hours at Met Museum and enjoyed the café; walked down Madison Ave and picked up Jifeng at 68 street; went to Yijia’s hotpot party and sung Karaoke all night long; came back and had tea till late night;
Dec 25th: got up late; went to 68 street to see Happy Feet with IMAX; had bad stomach; went a long way to Flushing with Xu and Jifeng to meet Jin and Ma Yue for dinner; had bubble tea together and chatted all night;
Dec 26th: Jifeng and Xu failed to get any sleep; Went to Met Opera and got tickets for The First Emperor; met Mingwei at MoMa and spent hours there; got dressed for the opera and spent the night there; chatted till the morning;
Dec 27th: Got up late and sent Mingwei to Penn Station (I have a weird feeling about that station); came back and sent Xu to bus station; went to Met Opera with Zhan and Xiaohong for the rush tickets for I Puritani and failed to get the tickets; instead went to Korean town for a great dinner;
Dec 28th: Slept for 12 hours; went to Doctor and finished visa forms; found out a job offer; decided to treat myself well and went to see The Perfume and The Queen at Lincoln Plaza Cinema.
Won’t you fall in love with a prince with slippers? Tamio in the Die Zauberflöte yesterday night actually had a pair of purple slippers. I guess it might be the fashion in ancient Egypt. As the most welcomed performance for kids, Met Opera in fact prepares two version of the show: one full-length version of Die Zauberflöte and one 90 minutes version of Magic Flute for family. In order to have a better view from my H110 at family circle, I finally got myself a binocular and it worked perfectly.
Die Zauberflöte is a story of “love can conquer all”. From Wikipedia:
“Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, (en: The Magic Flute) is an opera in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form which included both singing and spoken dialogue. The opera is often noted for its prominent Masonic elements. Both Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons and lodge brothers, though the Freemasons were at the time regarded by the public at large as a dangerous and subversive organization. The opera is also heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and can be regarded as an analogy for enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night represents irrational-diabolic obscurantism, whereas her antagonist Sarastro symbolises the reasonable sovereign who rules with paternalistic wisdom and enlightened insight. In the end he prevails over the darkness ("The sun's rays drive away the night, destroy the evil power of the dissembler"). But the darkness is by no means frightening and abhorrent, but beautiful, mysterious and fascinating. As an awesome seductress the Queen of the Night is a dangerous power who can only be overcome by knowledge.
A notable feature of the music is the way in which Mozart was able to write for a range of skill-sets in the singers. Compare, for example, the vocal lines for Monostatos (which are easy, "obvious" lines to sing for a modest voice; are also often stated first in strings so the singer can find his pitch; and which are doubled as he sings, to give him the tune – anyone who has sung a karaoke arrangement of a well-known song will know the kind of process) with those of Pamina or the Queen of the Night (which give few such clues for the singer and demand decent operatic ability). Yet, in ensembles, Mozart manages to combine voices of virtuosos with those of what are essentially comic actors, and create a satisfying result. The F6 which the Queen of the Night must reach in both her arias is beyond the range of many first-rate sopranos. At the low end, Sarastro must sing an F at several points; it requires a good bass to hit the note impressively, but the note does not go below the range of the choral basses.” 
Julie Taymor's magical production of Mozart's sublime and mystical opera features bears and serpents, and, of course, a rotating cast of internationally acclaimed young singers, including soprano Isabel Bayradkarian and baritone Nathan Gunn. James Levine conducts the performance the past night. The stage design was really splendid and the installations were made of glass. So you feel like going to a crystal world where fairy tale does happen. Basically, there were four sets of class stages and they can be separated as independent stage or combined together as a palace or temple. The light designer fully used the reflection of the class walls to create a fantastic dream world of all generations. The performance was so much like the hallowing parade, where performers in black customs manipulated flying sneaks, bears and birds on the stage. The bears were so cute and they were not terrifying at all. Among the singers, I like the Queen of the Night by Cornelia Götz. She really got the emotional intensity of the mad queen and her aria in Act II (Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen) was very beautifully done. In terms of theatrical performance, Rodion Pogossov gave a wonderful interpretation of the carefree Papageno, who was longing for a Papagena but not the exhalted brotherhood. The bass, Sarastro by Stephen Milling, had several wonderful arias, including the everlasting masterpiece “O Isis und Osiris”. Tamino was played by Christoph Strehl, he is quite handsome but not sing as well.
The story itself is interesting. The notes on the making of the opera said the story was built upon fairy tale and the play was a combination of pop “magic story” of 18 century and elegant operatic form. The liberetto and stage designer was friend of Mozart and he wanted something for all kinds of audience for his popular theater. Mozart created this wonderful piece which masterfully combined different opera genres without compromised its playfulness and humor. In fact, the play is nothing but a great challenge for stage design, because the scene changes so often and it demands changes in short period of time. I can hardly imagine how the dying Mozart created this work of art dedicated to love and life. In the play, he praised the merit of love, friendship and brotherhood which he would soon lose forever. It is such a great irony that he composed and conducted the opera and died three months later. The opera was like his last call for life, crystallizing all his passion for being human and being in love. In contrast to Wagner’s overwhelming heroic and epically tales, Mozart’s play is much more delicious. It becomes every child’s dream. Even when we grow up, we still hold those dreams dear to our heart. We love our princes even they wear only slippers. Whereas there is love, there is hope!
