Taiwanese Sun Tsui-feng endured a series of misfortunes before she became an opera star
You could say that Taiwanese opera superstar Sun Tsui-feng got married to the job.
She started her singing career at 26 - very late for Chinese opera in Taiwan - when she married into a family where all seven sons and their wives could sing and act.
The family runs the respected Ming Hwa Yuan Taiwanese Opera Company, which is presenting The Immortal Of Penglai at The Esplanade this Weekend.
Sun's husband, Cheng Sheng-fu, is the artistic director of the troupe.
Sun, who is a household name in Taiwan, cross-dresses in the leading role of Li Xuan, one of the Eight Immorals in Chinese mythology.
The Singapore show will feature a new set and new costumes, and will have a new and exciting martial arts scene, she adds.
Indeed, her parents were both opera actors who tried to keep her away from the stage to protect her from a hard life.
She had actually intended to be an accountant, until she met her cousin Cheng, now her husband.
When he proposed, her mother told him : "My daughter can't sing or act. Don't let her join your family's troupe."
He agreed - up to a point.
He set up a film production house and Sun managed the accounts.
Then tragedy struck. She gave birth to a son but he died suddenly when he was just five months old. Not long after, Cheng's company went bankrupt when Taiwan's film industry was hit by economic woes.
Sun says : "In a short while, we went from being fairly well-to-do to rock-bottom, with debtors hounding us. It was really hopless. I even contemplated suicide."
Her husband's family offered to help them and eventually she joined Ming Hwa Yuan, where she decided to be an actress.
Why? She says with a laugh : "All my sisters-in-law could sing and act and are part of the company. If I didn't do it, I would be the odd one out."
So at age 26 and behind her parents' back, she joined the opera troupe, little thinking she would become one of the leading lights of Chinese opera in Taiwan.
She could sing well enough when she joined, but life was still tough. She cried at practice sessions where she stretched her body with fellow students who were just eight or nine years old, the normal age opera students take up the art.
She also worked hard on learning minanyu, the dialect that Gezhai opera, a traditional Taiwanese opera, is performed in.
Slowly, she worked her way up from playing bit roles such as maids and eunuchs to leading roles playing both sexes.
The talented Sun has played parts ranging from handsome scholars, fearsome warriors wielding broad swords to that of the beautiful Madame White Snake.
This versatility will be seen in the 2 1/2 hour-long The Immortal Of Penglai at The Esplanade, which tells the story of how a dashing and powerful immortal came to be Iron Crutch Li, an irascible and ugly old god who is said to be kind to the sick and poor.
The key to being a good actress, Sun says, is the fact that she has been through hard times herself, and that she empathises with her characters on a profound level.
She says : "If your've experienced your own flesh and blood being taken away from you and debtors at your back, you can feel your characters' emotions profoundly.
"I've had a good career, but I paid my price."
Article take from
The Straits Times
Life! 6/9/2008
