From Cultural Revolution to culture

Hao Jiang Tian, who grew up in Mao's China, adds his resonant bass to some of the world's leading opera companies

By Tim Smith

November 13, 2008

Hao Jiang Tian will sing in Baltimore Opera's "Norma." (Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam / November 5, 2008)

He cheered when his piano teacher was jailed. He destroyed classical recordings by the wagon-load. He broke into libraries to steal books. He was such a ruffian, even the army didn't want him.

But today, Hao Jiang Tian is a model of civility, collegiality and artistry, welcomed regularly at opera houses, where his deep, resonant bass has been an asset in many a performance - 332 of them so far at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone since 1991.

This weekend, Tian will be among the principals in Baltimore Opera Company's production of Bellini's Norma, singing the role of Oroveso, the Druid leader, whose daughter's entanglement with a Roman proconsul leads to a fiery tragedy.

It's one of several roles that Tian has sung at the Met, earning strong marks from the press (Andante praised his "splendidly grave Oroveso" in 2001). Another is General Wang in the high-profile premiere of Tan Dun's The First Emperor, appearing opposite Placido Domingo.

How Tian, 54, ended up becoming a regular presence at one of the world's most prestigious opera houses was chronicled in a well-received book, co-written with Lois B. Morris and released last May - Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met. That journey may also soon find its way into a one-man show the singer is developing.

There are several unusual elements about Tian's story, starting with the most glaring: "When I was a little child, I hated music," he says, sitting in a break room at the Baltimore Opera's rehearsal/warehouse building.

The Beijing-born Tian was interested in painting, but his parents had other ideas (his father was a conductor, his mother a composer). "I was forced to study piano," he says. "To me, the piano was a big beast."

He felt even less kindly toward his piano teacher.

"In those days, there were loudspeakers all over China to announce the latest decisions of the Central Party," Tian says. "One early morning, I heard over the speakers an announcement that my piano teacher had been arrested. I was so happy I ran to the courtyard screaming with joy."

The singer, who became a U.S. citizen in the mid-1990s, looked up his old teacher during a visit to China 30 years after that joyous, childhood dance. "I wanted to apologize to him for what I had done," Tian says. "I didn't know how tragic it had been for him. He had tears in his eyes. 'No one knew what was right or wrong then,' he told me."

That's because the infamous Cultural Revolution had begun, profoundly affecting virtually every aspect of life in the country between 1966 and 1976.

"It was a chaos period," Tian says. "I went through a lot. My family went through a lot. In 1966, I was asked by my parents to take all of their old records - 78s - to the recycle station. Anything related to Western culture you had to get rid of, or sell as trash. I took about 150 records to the station. A man asked to smash them to small pieces, and I found a piece of rock. It was a fun day for me. I didn't know what a treasure it was."

In 1969, Tian's parents were ordered to leave Beijing for "re-education." As he helped them pack, Tian made a discovery. "I found a record behind the speaker cabinet of the record player," he says. "My father insisted that I play it, even though it was dangerous."

It was a recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastoral."

"My father started to tell me what was happening in the music: 'This is the first theme, the second theme. Imagine the water, the birds singing, the peasants dancing, the storm.' My father was always very serious," Tian says. "I could never relax in front of him. But as the music played, I was shocked by his face. It became so tender, so bright, so full of love. I knew this music had to be very powerful if it could change my father."

Tian was separated from his parents for 12 years and, at 15, was assigned to a factory. "It was heavy labor work," he says. But he found diversions - "I was wild, a Home Alone kid" - including robbery.

"I broke into libraries and stole a lot of books and exchanged them with friends," he says. "Most of them were novels [from the West] that were forbidden. The country was closed, but those books opened many windows inside me."

During those rebellious days, Tian wasn't accepted into the Red Guard, which was just as well. A chance encounter with a stranger in 1975 put him on the right path. One day, Tian yelled from the street to get the attention of a friend in an apartment building; a neighbor responded, asking if Tian's big voice meant that he was a singer.

"I went up to his apartment for five minutes," Tian says, "and those five minutes changed my life. He told me I might have a fine singing career."

A year later, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, Tian successfully auditioned for the main music conservatory in Beijing, singing a revolutionary song and a folk song.