He Hui: Soprano from the Silk Road

At a time when China and the West sometimes struggle to find common ground, the voice and dramatic presence of Chinese soprano He Hui has helped to build a cultural bridge.

The opera house may seem a strange place to find East-West harmony. But opera and audiences have long risen above the race and nationality of performers. Italians regularly sing the Japanese ingenue Madame Butterfly and the Chinese princess Turandot, while He sings the African slave girl Aida, the Italian diva Tosca, the French temptress Manon Lescaut, at least two Spanish noblewomen named Leonora and, in an upcoming debut, the Druid priestess Norma. What matters is the singing; audiences are largely color-blind.

"Music comes from Heaven," He said. "God has given me this gift of voice and musicality. It doesn't matter where I was born."

Leading singers today originate everywhere from Kansas to Korea, and are cheered in Buenos Aires and Stockholm as well as Milan and Vienna. But, "opera's soul remains in Italy," Antonello de Riu, Italian Consul General in Hong Kong, said. And that is why she made her way to Verona.

Her career started in a conservatory in her hometown, the northwestern city of Xi'an. "I first heard opera when I was 18," she said. "It was a recording of Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème. I didn't understand a single word, but I was moved to tears."

Her first big break came in 1998 as Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, in the dramatic tragedy set in ancient Egypt.

"The Florentine Maggio Musicale Festival had been invited to open a new theater in Shanghai," He said. "The cast was entirely made up of well-known Italian and international singers, but the festival also wanted a second, entirely Chinese, cast and that was how I was selected for the role of Aida."

An invitation to Placido Domingo's Operalia competition for young singers followed. Opera agent Giorgio Benati brought her to Italy on the strength of this performance in 2000, where she finished second. "It was very hard. There were many auditions, I was travelling all the time and hardly spoke Italian. Benati, who worked with me for many years, helped with culture, language, introductions and many other things."

Her first breakthrough came in Parma, where she landed the role of Puccini's heroine Tosca – the passionate, fiery diva who plunges a dinner knife into the chest of the chief of the Roman secret police. Parma was a risky place to debut and Tosca was a challenging role to interpret. "The Teatro Regio di Parma is a difficult, intense opera house," she said. "The audiences are very knowledgeable and don't hesitate to whistle if they don't like something." But Raina Kabaivanska, one of the most renowned artists to play Toscas in the 1970s, came forward to mentor her. "Not just in singing, she also taught how to portray the character, how to move on stage, how to hold myself," He said.

The risks paid off and her debut performance in 2002 at Teatro Regio was "un miracolo," she said, a miracle. Other offers followed, and by the time of her 2003 debut as Madame Butterfly in Bordeaux, she was well on her way. Her Hong Kong debut came in 2006 in a concert performance of the same role with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. This jaw-dropping performance, for me, by this unknown Chinese soprano, at the time, was a thrilling, heart-rending one.

Although Madame Butterfly remains one of her most important roles, He was not destined to be typecast in Asian roles. She became the first Chinese soprano to sing Tosca at Milan's renowned Teatro alla Scala, and soon debuted as the first Chinese Aida ever at the Vienna State Opera and New York's Metropolitan. The Chicago Tribune wrote after her 2012 debut there that she "possesses a healthy, flexible, warmly beautiful spinto voice backed by solid technique and fine musical intelligence."

Aida was followed by many other Verdi roles. "I have a Verdi voice," she said. She even won the Verdi Voices competition in the composer's home town of Busseto in 2002.

She went on to become a regular performer and audience favorite at Verona's famous Arena, a Roman-era colosseum, which is a summer temple to opera in Italy. She is now working on a CD of Verdi arias with the Arena's orchestra under the direction of Roberto Rizzi Brignoli. "Recording is exhausting because you can't hide anything at all," she says. "But I have been singing with this orchestra for ten years and they know me well. And Maestro Rizzi Brignoli is excellent."

A documentary – He Hui, Soprano from the Silk Road – about her life as a Chinese singer making a mark in this quintessentially Western art form is in the works. "For an Asian singer to enter this Western world is one of life's most beautiful things," she says.

China has not completely lost He to the bright lights in the opera capitals of the West. She sings regularly in Beijing. Her most recent performances included another Verdi heroine, Amelia in Simon Boccanegra. She returned this October with Opera Hong Kong as Tosca, a portrayal I found entirely Italian, complete with a stage presence that harkened back to a golden age of Toscas.

The fact that China has Western opera at all might surprise but Opera Hong Kong's artistic director, Warren Mok, said opera is no different than novels, symphonies and pop music: an originally Western art form that has become universal.

China has been sending an increasing number of singers westward. He says there is considerable potential among young Chinese opera singers, but developing it will take time. "China is full of good singers but a good voice isn't enough," she said. "It's necessary to study Western culture and operatic traditions. And you need a strong will."

"The life of a singer is hard," she said. "It's full of sacrifice as well as success；loneliness along with happiness; living out of suitcases and leaving your family and Chinese culture behind."

Other Chinese singers have started to walk on the path forged by He to study and sing in Italy. "Chinese coaches still focus on technique," she said, "but it's also necessary to master the language and how to portray characters." The soprano says she learned Italian on her own, "by ear," by living and working in Italy over the past 13 years.

Her commitment to her art, one that is Western in origin but is universal, transcends nationality, race and politics. "Singing has brought me a miraculous life," she says. "I've already lived many of my dreams."

"But there are still many new roles to sing," she said. She has just debuted as Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi's La Forza del Destino – The Force of Destiny – at Verona's Teatro Filarmonico. Set in Spain in the mid-18th century, it tells the story of a love affair doomed by an accidental discharge from a pistol.

"I like this opera very much," she says. "The music for the soprano is special and important." When He sings Leonora's famous aria, "pace, pace" – "peace, peace" – her voice reverberates far beyond her adopted Italian hometown and her native land, captivating hearts of a global audience.

Peter Gordon is an editor of the Asian Review of Books