Bringing the Golden Lily into Blossom: A Libretto in Progress

My first encounter with Jin Ping Mei, one of the “four marvelous books” from the Ming dynasty,1 took place in a small, old classroom at Harvard fifteen years ago. As a visiting student, I was trying to sit in on as many graduate-level Chinese literature classes as possible, as my home university did not offer any. Professor Tian Xiaofei’s seminar on Jin Ping Mei was among the courses offered at Harvard that semester.2 When I walked into the small classroom, I thought I was just taking yet another course on a classic work that any student of Ming-Qing literature was obliged to read. Never did I expect that that encounter with Jin Ping Mei would be the beginning of a long engagement with the text: the novel was the subject of my first conference presentation; later, it acquired a crucial presence in my dissertation; I reference it frequently in my work as a teacher of Chinese literature; and, a decade after my first encounter with it, I embarked on the journey of turning it into a Western opera libretto, entitled Golden Lily, in collaboration with composer Fang Man. Consisting of three acts, each of which includes three scenes, our project is well underway. During the process of creating Golden Lily, I have discovered important ways in which writing a libretto differs from writing a scholarly piece. Take, for example, the approach to characters.