UC Berkeley recently welcomed a distinguished alumnus, playwright and director Stan Lai, to campus for a series of special events in honor of his directorial work on the San Francisco Opera’s premiere of Dream of the Red Chamber.
On Sept. 12, Berkeley’s Arts Research Center and the Center for Chinese Studies invited more than 175 guests to explore the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber and its transformation into a new opera, including talks by distinguished scholars such as Judith Zeitlin and Wu Hun from the University of Chicago; Jindong Cai and Kara Riopelle from Stanford University; and Cindy Cox and Sophie Volpp from UC Berkeley. The event ended in a lively dialogue with Lai and Wen-hsin Yeh, the Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor in History at UC Berkeley.
The next evening, the Arts + Design Initiative, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Division, hosted a special UC Berkeley night at the San Francisco Opera. More than 100 members of the Berkeley campus community attended, including many faculty, staff, alumni and more than 60 students. Lai and Matthew Shilvock, general director of the San Francisco Opera, were there with the UC Berkeley group.
To mark the occasion, the Arts + Design Initiative invited writer Brandon Brown, a staffer with University Development and Alumni Relations, to attend the opera and write about it. Below is his review.