Shi Yijie is one of the representative singers of light lyric tenor on the opera stage today, and the first Chinese singer to appear in the "Rossini Opera Festival" in Italy, performing in the world's top theaters. In China, he "went out of the circle" because he served as the producer of "Sound into People's Hearts" and the guest singer of "Singer 2019", and once exploded the audience with 19 consecutive High C in the National Centre for the Performing Arts version of "Girl in the Army". 2021 marks the 120th anniversary of Verdi's death – in April, Shi Yijie performed in the National Centre for the Performing Arts version of the opera La Traviata, paying tribute to the composer. "La Traviata" was performed six times in a row in Beijing, and more than 8,000 tickets were sold out before the start of the show. Next, he will lead several new generation of bel canto boys who have grown up from "Sound into People's Hearts" to tour the country. Recently, a special contributor to the journal interviewed Shi Yijie to review how he has absorbed Western culture through long-term study to become a world-class tenor, and his efforts to "influence the West with our own things".
The three-hour journey from Shanghai to Tokyo is like a short trip from Beijing to Guangzhou, which is nothing new; but for 19-year-old Shi Yijie, he never expected that a small step by a small town youth would open up the world map of his life. Over the next 20 years, he immersed himself in the nourishment of different cultures, like a never-ending train, shuttling back and forth between the continents of the world: the destination, one of the landmarks of each city – the opera house or concert hall; the duty to interpret nearly 40 Western characters with different personalities – which is very different from his oriental face.
According to his self-effacing words, he is a singer, but the industry's comments are dazzling: a world-class tenor.
Shanghai
In 1982, the Shi family in Zhangjiang Town, Pudong, Shanghai, welcomed their only son, Shi Yijie. Shi Yijie was born with a good voice and a good sense of music. During elementary school, Shi Yijie joined the school's children's choir, and entered the Chuansha Children's Palace Choir in junior high school. When he went to high school, he really liked music and entered the art specialty class of high school. At this time, he heard that there is one of the best scientific vocal methods, called bel canto, so he decided to learn this.
"Bel canto" is originally an Italian vocal school, its vocal method scientifically uses the human body's resonance cavity, so that the volume is maximized, and the range is wide, the timbre is beautiful, and the penetration is rich. Later, this singing method spread all over the world and was perfectly presented on the opera stage. The world's three tenors, who are well known, are also the best on the opera stage.
In high school, Shi Yijie took many detours. At the age of 17, a friend of his father's Fa Xiao and baritone Liao Changyong of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music introduced him to Liao. At that time, Liao Changyong was already a domestic art star. Liao found that Shi had several insurmountable obstacles as a baritone, but he had a gorgeous tone and a good sense of music, so he suggested that he sing tenor instead, and recommended him to the tenor Wei Song. At Wei, Shi Yijie learned his first aria, "Boiling And Excited Heart" in La Traviata, and experienced the beauty of bel canto and Italian.
In 2001, Shi Yijie failed the college entrance examination. Disappointed, he once wanted to go to a technical school and think about becoming a programmer in the future. "In the past, singing popular was good, and it would be silly for three years to change the bel canto." Because you originally had a vocal habit, changed to bel canto, and your muscle balance for more than ten years was broken, you have to rebuild. At that time, I was in the balance period after the break, and I had not yet shown particularly good conditions, and I had not been able to show my future side. Shi Yijie said.
Even more disappointed than Shi Yijie was his father. This middle-aged man who went to the countryside in Inner Mongolia after graduating from junior high school deeply felt the pain of low culture and did not want his experience to repeat itself in his son.
One day, he saw a three-second text advertisement on a local educational television station, a Japanese music university enrolling students in Shanghai. So, he pulled Shi Yijie to watch it in front of the TV set, waiting for a few hours. The last thing I saw was Toho University of Music in Japan. The father and son wrote down the phone number and address and rushed to the scene the next day.
Seeing the tuition fee of 6 million yen (equivalent to 500,000 yuan at the time) on the enrollment brochure, Shi Yijie dragged her father's hand to retreat. Instead, the father asked the recruiting teacher to interview his son immediately. Shi Yijie sang two songs, the other party was very satisfied, and announced that he would come back to the written test in a few days. The exam went smoothly, and Shi Yijie got the notice of enrollment in the spring of the following year.
This time the Shi family was in trouble. Tuition fees alone would be 500,000, which was undoubtedly a large amount for a rural family 20 years ago. The father sold the new house he had just bought, and the family moved back to the old house, raising 600,000 yuan.
Tokyo
Toho University of Music in Japan is not a prestigious university, but Japanese classical music is very popular, thanks to the fact that Japan's modernization process began earlier, and it has always been open to the absorption of foreign cultures. There are often opera performances in Tokyo. At the New National Theatre, Shi Yijie watched the opera "Carmen" live for the first time. Beauty is self-evident, but Shi Yijie did not dare to think that she could stand on the stage and sing opera in the future.
For a self-funded international student, survival is the first priority. Although the family saved a sum of money for tuition, it was not enough. To save money for his family, he bought a bicycle and rode half an hour to school every day; after class, he went to the restaurant to wash dishes and then worked as a cook at an izakaya. Although I was tired, I was happy to be able to support myself and reduce the burden on my family. In the end, Shi Yijie only spent 300,000 yuan from her family, and other expenses were earned by herself.
Nor did I fall behind in my studies. His cultivation in music has been greatly improved, and his understanding of related cultures has also deepened a lot, while making up for what is missing in all aspects. Moreover, at the beginning of the professional course year, he got more opportunities for outstanding performance.
In his junior year, Shi Yijie went to the school's branch in Vienna to study, and the principal of the branch, Lin Qianxun, saw his talent and suggested to the school board that he would come to Vienna to continue his studies after graduation.
This requires a huge amount of money to achieve. After more than a year of discussion, the school board finally decided to fund Shi Yijie. This has never been the case at the university.
Graz
Graz is Austria's second largest city, 160 km from the capital Vienna. Shi Yijie's one-year study will be completed in an old mansion in this famous cultural city.
Lin Qianxun wanted to train him to become an opera singer in a year, but this was very demanding, not only requiring singing skills, but also being proficient in several Chinese words, not only to have the ability to perform, but also to have a sense of different cultures.
As a result, five teachers from different majors will personally teach every day.
In Shi Yijie's view, the most important and decisive role is the art instructor who taught him to learn opera. He had to understand the script and grasp the personality of the characters, especially to memorize the score and lyrics of the whole play, and he learned 12 plays a month and a year. Usually, a student learns a play in three or four months.
That year, he stayed in the house almost all day. There was such a building in the surrounding woods, and there was not even a neighbor. To the supermarket, 20 minutes walk down the hill. No phones and cell phones, no internet. I was homesick and could only run to the phone booth down the hill to talk. Every day when you open your eyes, you are singing, performing, memorizing words, and memorizing music scores. Close your eyes, and your mind is still full of melodies and lyrics.
It wasn't until half a year later that Shi Yijie realized that she had received accelerated training as an opera performer. This pressure is even greater: first, his thin oriental body shape should be like the tall and strong actors in Europe and the United States to sing opera, he has a little inferiority; second, the school provides such good conditions, afraid of learning badly sorry for others. But the teachers always encouraged him, "Sing well, sing well." ”
When he was flustered, he proposed to the teacher that he wanted to go outside and take a walk, "Don't you mean that I sing well, then you let me see how others sing." "The teacher told him to go down the mountain to participate in international competitions. Four games down, the first in the field, a total of seven awards. Shi Yijie was also confused: Am I really that good?
Those four games were not the highest level, but the third game made Shi Yijie find confidence.
It all started with the second game. After the award, an Italian judge took the initiative to find Shi Yijie. He thought that Shi Yijie would definitely speak Italian when singing an aria in a rounded Italian, but he found that Shi could only speak a few words.
This person is the famous local theater manager Jani Tanggucci, who is keen to discover young singers in the competition. Soon after, Shi Yijie received a letter from Tanggucci inviting him to participate in the Totti Dale Munter International Vocal Competition.
It's not just a competition, it's also a selection of actors for an opera, and the winner will receive a contract for the performance. Reaching the semi-finals were three Italians and a Chinese, and Shi Yijie was already satisfied. How likely is it to compete with three Italians for an Italian comedy opera and sing a large section of narration (recitation)?
No one expected that in the end, It was Shi Yijie who got that crucial contract. That opera was Mozart's Woman's Heart, and Shi Yijie was the only tenor among the six lead actors. The first time he appeared on the opera stage, he had a high starting point.
Venice - Milan - Pesaro - Rome - Florence - Bologna...
Opera originated in Florence, Italy around 1600. Just as Peking Opera is the national essence of China, opera is also italy's calling card. Shi Yijie's opera career began in Italy. Since 2007, he has performed in Italy for eight months a year, and for five years, he has almost run all over the boot-shaped Italy.
In 2008, Shi Yijie went to the Rossini (composer) Opera Research Institute for further study, and the tutor was a living fossil-like figure who studied the three composers of the bel canto era, so Shi received a very strict and orthodox training. Also from that year on, he participated in the "Rossini Opera Festival" for five consecutive years, starring in "The Journey of Reims", "Count Ollie", "De Metrio and Bobilio", "Moses in Egypt" and "Italian Girl in Algiers", and was regarded as one of the representatives of the Rossini tenor.
At first, the media was a little overwhelmed by this new face: "A very thin oriental man, weak and windy, as if he couldn't even hold the score, it was three apples high, and what was amazing was that as soon as he stopped there, his mouth began to set off fireworks." After that, words of praise kept coming.
There were also some harsh voices: "This man sang very well, but I listened with my eyes closed." Looking back at the 2009 "Count of Ollie" starring Shi Yijie, when Shi Yijie was in front of a group of tall Europeans, both his body shape and face would have a sense of violation. He conquered the discerning audience with his outstanding singing and performance.
The same thing happened to Shi Yijie's good friend Lawrence Brownley. The African-American singer was once considered by The New York Times to be the "tenor ushering in a new golden age." But there are also people who say sarcastically that you have a great voice, but you won't have any professional jobs. Until the age of 30, Little Black (nicknamed because of his small size) couldn't find a job.
Shi Yijie said that he could understand the psychology of his fans. They have long had their own fixed aesthetic orientation, an oriental face to play their familiar role, they are not used to it. Just like letting Westerners play Liang Shanbo and Jia Baoyu, to sing Chinese Peking Opera, and to perform a play in a serious way, we can't accept it. But if he can sing as well as we do, we'll praise him too.
When he first came to the stage, he was an oriental, and the little things he learned in school could not cope with the requirements on the stage at all, and Shi Yijie held the mentality of a student and studied on the job. Different theaters, masters and many predecessors taught him a lot. In those five years, he finished one acting, and at most he acted eight a year, and his brain exploded. The intense work often gives him nightmares at night: in his dreams, he is about to go on stage, but he finds that he has not studied the play, and he wakes up in a cold sweat.
Language is also a hurdle. Before college, english is learned, basic conversation is no problem. I learned fluent Japanese in four years. While working in Italy and learning, Italian was also taken down. Living in Graz, the local German speakers and are exposed to everyday contact and use. In the working relationship, if you want to sing French opera, you can also speak a little French; as for the occasional singing of Russian and Czech operas, you can only imitate them with the international phonetic alphabet. After five years, the outside world finally recognized him linguistically. There are comments that you listen to him sing with your eyes closed and you can't hear that he is a foreigner at all, whether it is Italian or German and French.
June 2012, Santiago Opera House, Chile, Donizetti opera "Rucreza Borgia"
The tenors in the opera are divided into light lyrical tenors, lyrical tenors, dramatic tenors, heroic tenors, etc. according to the different textures of the individual timbre, and the styles are different but there is no distinction between high and low. The early Shi Yijie was classified as a "light lyrical tenor", because of his thin body and light and bright tone, the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Mozart were his best. But with the accumulation of experience and the improvement of his skills, his tone has become rounded and transparent, full of tension. His performance in "Tank Reddi", confident, powerful and calm, has emerged from the previous slightly green performances, showing a mature charm.
Naturally, he also won hearts and minds. "My confidence comes from the audience." Bathed in continuous applause and the applause of "bravo", Shi Yijie ushered in his moment.
Graz - Paris - London - Copenhagen - New York - Moscow - Tokyo - Jerusalem - Santiago...
Graz is the second home of Shi Yijie. Here, he met his wife, an international student who had also studied vocal music from China, and they made a home here. Graz was the starting point of his career, and with this as the center of the circle and the radius of all continents, he opened the world map of his career.
Tanggucci introduced him to the agency of the singer Andrea Bocelli, who signed him six months later and has been working together ever since.
In 2010, Shi Yijie will be a father, and it is learned that they are twin sisters, which disrupts their original plans to stay abroad. First, Shi Yijie spends only a handful of time at home every year; second, it is not realistic to let her wife take care of her two children alone. Shi Yijie could not bear to let her wife overwork, so she set up a home in her hometown of Changsha, Hunan Province, so that the elderly in the family could help take care of the children.
For the first five years, he was more of a walker in Europe. From 2012 onwards, there were eight months a year when he was going to perform all over the world. Graz is like a makeshift dock, come back to change clothes or suitcases, stay for a day or two, and fly to a country thousands or even thousands of miles away. Time at home, which adds up to no more than 30 days a year.
When people asked where they lived, Shi Yijie always replied sadly: "I live in my suitcase." Where the show is, I'm there. ”
Earlier, Shi Yijie often stayed alone in Graz, and his wife could only come from China every summer to accompany him, and the children were too young to come and get together. After a long time, Shi Yijie also wanted to have children. Since 2014, he has simply shifted the focus of his work to China. Moreover, the domestic art market began to prosper, and there were many performances, and half of them worked abroad and half at home.
Over the years, he has insisted on performing two or three operas abroad every year, that is, for four months. After all, opera is someone else's thing, thriving in other people's positions, and there are more mature audiences abroad, and he has to force himself to clockwork and recharge.
Shi Yijie said that although his happiness index in China is much higher, he can spend time with his family and his income is comparable to that of abroad, but he is prone to fall into the comfort zone. In order to stay professional, you have to jump out of this comfort zone from time to time.
Every time I get off the plane, Shi Yijie seems to have returned to the era of studying abroad. Take your own taxi to the booked apartment. Because it usually takes about a month to line up a new drama, you can cook your own food in the apartment. The skills of chefs who were recruited for employment came in handy again. Maintaining the fighting spirit of the past and reducing his inertia is his way of countering time.
February 2014, Toulouse Municipal Opera, France, Donizetti opera "Pet"
When she first debuted, Shi Yijie started from Rossini's light lyrical tenor role, and then slowly transformed into a lyrical tenor, starring in Donizetti's "Sweet Love", Verdi's "Rigoletto", "La Traviata" and so on. After years of polishing, Shi Yijie has applied his vocal cords as an instrument to the golden section, a good balance of mastery, the breath and resonance cavity to the extreme, so that his not very tall body burst out of amazing energy and penetration.
"As a person of a different culture, to be able to stand on their stage, sing their things, sing to this point, has been satisfied." 」 Shi Yijie added, "I am a person who is easily satisfied. ”
Beijing
In 2020, affected by the global epidemic, Shi Yijie, an international train that was difficult to stop, finally stopped at The China Station for a long time due to external forces.
In fact, as early as October 2010, Shi Yijie starred in the composer Ye Xiaogang's opera "Wing Farewell", which made the domestic audience appreciate his stunning performance on the stage for the first time, and understood why Ye Xiaogang said, "If I don't cooperate with him, I would rather wait and not perform." ”
In April 2021, in Beijing, the three-story underground rehearsal hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts was rehearsing the opera "La Traviata". Shi Yijie sat in the corner, watching the rehearsal of the B group actors, silently reciting the words to the music in his mouth, and flipping through the music from time to time. At the end of Group B, Koujing, who played Alfred, sighed to Shi Yijie: Kneeling for so long, I am tired. Shi Yijie quipped, just lie there, after singing the curtain will be pulled down, and then let others pull you up.
After that, it was Shi Yijie's turn to play. This is the end of the second act of "La Traviata", where the crowd condemns Alfred's insults and accusations against Violetta, and Shi Yijie kneels on the ground for more than five minutes, and the character's remorse and grievances are written on his face facing the ground.
Usually, most of the actors rehearse are familiar with the rhythm and position, and they will not be 100% devoted, and Shi Yijie is the most serious one in the audience. He said that he got used to the muscle memories that he had developed over the years, and once he entered the role, he would reflexively and be fully engaged. "Being an actor is also a manual worker."
Rossini Opera Festival, Italian Girls in Algiers
Walking out of the rehearsal hall, Shi Yijie greeted everyone, as if he were an old patron. Since 2014, he has worked with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in China, starring in several operas such as Italian Girl in Algiers, William Retreat, Don Pasquale, The Merry Widow, Rukia of Rammermore, Falstaff, The Army Girl and La Traviata, as well as performing in concert halls and New Year's concerts.
Especially in 2018's "Girl in the Army", his 19 High Cs became popular on the Internet. The hot search for opera was the first ever. Many people know for the first time that the return of the opera is to sing the repertoire again. Being able to sing 9 High Cs in one go is already a touchstone for testing tenors; Shi Yijie returned to the scene once and added one more, so he had the reputation of "stone god". The opera caught fire because of him.
With the development of China's economy and the opening up of culture, Chinese opera is in a period of rising blowout. Many famous foreign opera houses began to cooperate with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in China, not only choreographers and choreographers, but also brought the main actors of different voices, and usually the tenor would be left to the Chinese - because there was a stone leaning clean.
But the Chinese tenor is not only Shi Yijie. Over the years, a large number of Chinese students have gone to Italy or other European countries to study vocal music. Shi Recalls that when he participated in the International Vocal Competition, there were 40 Koreans out of 100 people, and only two or three Chinese; today, 30 out of 100 people will have Chinese, and a group of younger and more powerful tenors have emerged.
Like Zhang Xiqiu, who once came to prominence in the Youth Song Competition, after years of study in Italy, she has undergone a qualitative change and won many international awards, and its brilliant high voice and texture are surprising. Zhang Long, who is less than 30 years old, won the first place in the influential German New Voice Competition, and then starred in the Prague State Opera's "Rigoletto". There is also Wang Chuan in Milan and Xiahou Jinxu in Vienna, who also starred in major opera houses. In the interview, Shi Yijie also praised these peers.
To study opera, you must go through a long period of foreign influence, in that dyeing vat, three to five years to dye a little color. The passion of singing, the grasp of the sense of language, and the formation of style, only the accumulation of many years will form the conditioned reflex of singing and form things in the blood. This is the insight brought to him by Shi Yijie's personal experience.
"But our cultural prosperity is not just about playing their stuff, it's about influencing them with our own stuff." Shi Yijie, who has acted in the English version of "Dream of the Red Chamber," is looking forward to using Chinese to sing a Chinese opera and influence the world.
Dream of the Red Chamber
Looking back on his personal experience, Shi Yijie concluded that he was fortunate to catch up with three different periods.
First, I caught the last train to study abroad. This is the common spiritual wealth of that generation of international students. Chen Chong, who also went out from Shanghai, was one of the earliest international students after the reform and opening up, and even if she was crowned with the crown of Chinese film queen, she also had to work in restaurants to serve dishes. Years later, Chen Chong, who had established a foothold in Hollywood, once met a former colleague in a restaurant with a plate and tried to dodge, and she came forward to comfort: "Nothing, everyone has come this way." ”
Today, many wealthier Chinese send their children abroad, and most of them no longer have to work and wash dishes like their predecessors, but take the credit cards given by their parents and solve everything they need for life. And when setbacks come, credit cards are useless.
The second is to catch the last train of the opera boom. From 2007 to 2012, it was the last prime time for European opera, with many plays to perform and good financial returns. Shi Yijie heard european predecessors say that in the 1990s, they could buy a house in the local area with a month's income. In 2012, the European economic crisis hit the cultural field, with less government funding, less corporate sponsorship, a shrinking market, fewer opportunities, and young singers in front of seniors, and it was difficult to emerge.
The third is to catch the first train of network prosperity. It used to be difficult to watch opera videos, and to check the materials had to go to the library. Now, open the video website, Shi Yijie's singing can be seen everywhere, "Before I mainly performed abroad, when there were potatoes and Youku in China, there were many friends who tirelessly 'carried' videos from foreign video websites to China, and gradually everyone understood me." On social networks such as Zhihu and Douban, the topic of Shi Yijie's singing skills and singing level has also been discussed in full swing.
Usually, the golden age of an opera singer is 35 to 55 years old, and Shi Yijie is in the ascendancy of his career, and he says he can do better. But more importantly, don't be tempted by fame and fortune to perform a play that is not suitable for you and prematurely sing a bad voice. A few years ago, he was invited to appear in "The Bohemian", which was a play he really wanted to play, but he refused. Because the band of "Bohemians" is too heavy, he will compete with the band, the voice will be tense, and the muscles will be used to the limit. People's vocal cords are elastic, and singing wide can't go back. Therefore, most of the famous singers in Europe are very restrained. Shi Yijie feels that after the age of 40, all aspects of his physical functions have entered the best period of stability, and he can pick up some challenging plays.
He also did not refuse to cross over to sing musicals, and the most wanted to perform were "Phantom of the Opera" and "West End Story". He has a special love for Chinese art songs, and a series of performances are arranged next. He also used the method of Metong to interpret Original Chinese songs and popularize the bel canto singing method to the public.
For the foreseeable future, Shi Yijie will also be a global traveler. His contract has been signed until 2023. Even before the outbreak of the epidemic in Europe last year, he rehearsed Verdi's Fastav at the Vienna State Opera until two days before the performance had to stop. Once global cultural activities return to normal, on stages such as the Paris Opera, which singers from all over the world dream of, people will see the face of the East that is no longer unfamiliar.
This is the fruit and charm of globalization. If you think about it, almost half of Shi Yijie's life has been spent abroad. Without the wisdom and mind of the Japanese school at that time, Shi Yijie may really have learned computers and become a code farmer for employment; without long-term Western artistic training and cultural influence, it is difficult for Orientals to gain a firm foothold on the opera stage; more importantly, the scientific method and brilliant civilization transcend the distinction between East and West, and only by learning from all the excellent things of mankind will there be one after another Shi Yijie.
Shi Yijie, who is about to enter the age of confusion, has two wishes, "One is to know what kind of voice he will sing after he is 60 years old; the other is to sit in the theater and listen to his own voice (on stage)." "The former, time can give the answer, the latter is like an unfinished luxury, unless he can complete an impossible thing like Angel in Nolan's film "Deadly Magic" - through magic to copy a self - the stage of Shi Yijie, is a Chinese, the stage of Shi Yijie, is an international person.
In a sense, he managed to make the impossible possible.