With its 500-year-old history, kunqu is one of China’s oldest forms of dramatic expression. Told in 27 scenes spread across three evenings, this nine-hour opera by Tang Xianzu is one of its keystone works. A mix of singsong poetic arias, flowing dance and pantomime, it is not opera as we know it in the West. It is also distinct from Beijing or Peking opera.

Setting such a venerable history aside, it almost doesn’t matter how you label The Peony Pavilion. It is, at heart, a beautiful and curious spectacle presented with such dedicated artistry by the Suzhou Kunqu Opera Company that I left the first part feeling honoured to have seen it and determined to take in the other two instalments this weekend.

The traditional fable upon which it is based is a love story commonly considered China’s answer to Romeo and Juliet. The producer, Kenneth H. Y. Pai, has underlined the connection by subtitling his version The Young Lovers’ Edition. He has also wisely cast two younger actors, scrupulously trained by master practitioners of kunqu, in the lead roles.

In Part One Shen Fengying turns in a large-scale yet exquisitely subtle performance as Du Liniang, a slender, palefaced and privileged 16-year-old fatally susceptible to the first hormonally active stirrings of spring. In an era when females were expected to be obedient, doll-like vessels of spotless purity, her encounter with a scholarly “dream lover” (played by Yu Jiulin in the high-pitched, high-style manner that kunqu requires) in the freshly blooming garden of her erotic imagination must have carried quite a charge.

The languorous pace of their romance will not be everyone’s cup of green tea. Part One ends with the self-absorbed, love-sick teen giving up the ghost after much sighing, swaying and melodious yowling. The damp, purple fantasy that precedes her untimely and protracted demise was both seductive and, at times, irresistibly silly. I was not expecting to be moved, too. It is this emotional response that ensures my return to Sadler’s Wells, along with the gorgeous costumes, the shimmering live music and a resurrection-themed plot that promises to conduct me to hell and back.

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