The Bonesetter's Daughter is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in a prologue

Prologue

A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...

 and two acts by Stewart Wallace

Stewart Wallace

Stewart Wallace is an American composer and cantor. He has spent much of his career composing experimental operas, from the dance-centered Kabbalah to the surrealist Hopper's Wife...

 to a libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by
Amy Tan

Amy Tan

Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...

 based on her novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 of the same name

The Bonesetter's Daughter

The Bonesetter's Daughter, published in 2001, is Amy Tan's fourth novel. Like much of Tan's work, this novel deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother....

. It premiered on 13 September 2008 at the War Memorial Opera House of San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

, which commissioned

Commission (art)

In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, ensembles often commission pieces from composers, where the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors.- Commissions for public art...

 the work.

Roles

Role	Voice type Voice type A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...	Premiere cast, 13 September 2008 Conductor Conducting Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble... : Steven Sloane Steven Sloane Steven Sloane is an American-born conductor based in Germany.He has been musical director of the Symphony Orchestra in Bochum since 1994. He is also musical director of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra in Stavanger, Norway, a post he has held since 2007.In August 1999, Sloane was appointed Music...
Ruth Young Kamen LuLing as a young woman	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Zheng Cao
LuLing Liu Young	mezzo-soprano	Ning Liang
Precious Auntie	Kunju Kunqu Kunqu , also known as Kunju , Kun opera or Kunqu Opera, is one of the oldest extant forms of Chinese opera. It evolved from the Kunshan melody, and dominated Chinese theatre from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The style originated in the Wu cultural area...  mezzo	Qian Yi
Chang the Coffin Maker	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Hao Jiang Tian
Taoist Priest Chef	Chinese folk/pop tenor	Wu Tong
Art Kamen	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	James Maddalena James Maddalena James Maddalena is an American baritone who is chiefly associated with contemporary American opera. He gained international recognition in 1987 when he created the role of Richard Nixon at the premiere of Adams's opera Nixon in China at Houston. He has since reprised the role on many occasions,...
Arlene Kamen	mezzo-soprano	Catherine Cook
Marty Kamen	bass-baritone Bass-baritone A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...	Valery Portnov
Dory Kamen	girl soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Madelaine Matej
Fia Kamen	girl soprano	Rose Frazier
Chang's first wife	soprano	Mary Finch
Chang's second wife	mezzo-soprano	Natasha Ramirez Leland
Chang's third wife	mezzo-soprano	Erin Neff
Acrobats		Dalian Acrobatic Troupe
Suona Suona The suona ; also called laba or haidi is a Han Chinese shawm . It has a distinctively loud and high-pitched sound, and is used frequently in Chinese traditional music ensembles, particularly those that perform outdoors...		Wu Tong, Zuo Jicheng
Chinese percussionists		Li Zhonghua, Ma Li, Nie Haijun, Jin Liang
Director		Chen Shi-Zheng Chen Shi-zheng Chen Shi-Zheng 陳士爭 born in 1963 in Changsha, Hunan, China) is a New York-based theater director.Having earned a BA from the Hunan Art School in Traditional Opera, he received his MA from the Tisch School of Art at New York University...
Set designer		Walt Spangler
Costume designer		Han Feng
Lighting designer		Scott Zielinski
Video designer		Leigh Haas
Sound designer		Mark Grey Mark Grey Mark Grey is an American Classical music composer and sound engineer. He is the composer-in-residence for the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra for the 2007–2008 season...
Choreographer		Wang Yuqing
Aerial choreographer		Ruthy Inchaustegui
Approximate running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes including one intermission

Plot

The Bonesetter's Daughter traces a Chinese-American woman's search for her own voice and identity as she grapples with her elderly mother's apparent dementia, her husband's ambivalent commitment, and her teen stepdaughters' hurtful self absorption. Guided by a ghost of uncertain identity, she travels into the past and lives out portions of her mother's tragic youth, gaining insight, forgiveness, and strength.

The opera is set both in 1997 San Francisco, and in China and Hong Kong around the outbreak of World War II.

Shifting times and locales are linked by a recurring trio of women: American-born Ruth, a professional ghostwriter who scarely speaks up for herself; her mother, LuLing, who appears both as a querulous old woman and as a selfish adolescent; and LuLing's childhood caretaker known as Precious Auntie, who appears both as a ghost and as the fiery young mother she once was.

Scenes

• Prologue — Dragon Dance – A timeless void
• Act 1, scene 1 – Fountain Court Restaurant, San Francisco, 1997
• Act 1, scene 2 – Immortal Heart, a village outside Beijing, 1930s
• Act 2, scene 1 – Hong Kong Harbor, 1940s
• Act 2, scene 2 – A hospital room, San Francisco, 1997

For further details, see The Bonesetter's Daughter

The Bonesetter's Daughter

The Bonesetter's Daughter, published in 2001, is Amy Tan's fourth novel. Like much of Tan's work, this novel deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother....

.

Analysis

The score folds authentic Chinese musical expression into an essentially Western idiom, just as the libretto incorporates Chinese themes—such as the importance of family, and the power of ghosts and lucky charms—within an American framework. That framework includes many popular references, including a wry jab at "Medicare-approved" nursing homes and reference to Ruth's profession as a ghostwriter, which her immigrant mother misconstrues literally to mean a transcriptionist for ghosts. Notably, the infamous O. J. Simpson murder trial

O. J. Simpson murder case

The O. J. Simpson murder case was a criminal trial held in Los Angeles County, California Superior Court from January 29 to October 3, 1995. Former American football star and actor O. J...

of 1995 becomes the vehicle by which elderly LuLing remembers and narrates traumatic events from her adolescence in China, which are revealed as the crux of her conflicts with her daughter.