Well, actually, Yoichi himself is a famous Japanese hero, a 12th C. archer who killed a monster and went on to help secure Japan for the Genji clan, after which he looked back on his life and decided the only thing he'd ever been expert at was killing. He renounced the military life and spent the rest of his days on extended pilgrimages to pray for the souls of soldiers slain in war. The other night I saw Harmonia Opera -- apparently, the only Japanese opera company resident in the US -- in a one-night-only performance of an opera based on this story.

The music (by Kazuko Hara)was more western than eastern, though Asian influences were clear. For example, though there were various choruses (soldiers, court ladies, villagers), which is a western way of doing things, there were no duets or trios: all the main characters sang solo arias, very Asian. The instruments were all western orchestral instruments, except for a synthesizer, which I didn't like. I also didn't like the staging. The small theater had no orchestra pit, so the entire orchestra -- about a dozen people -- was onstage. That's okay with me, but in this case they were arranged to take up the entire stage-right third of the stage, leaving the opera to be enacted stage-center and stage-left. It felt cockeyed to me. And the sets, considering that the scene-changing had to be done onstage -- there's no curtain -- were unnecessarily fussy. But the music was pleasing, the singing good, with one standout: mezzo Silvana Chu. The libretto was in Japanese, and that's one of the reasons I went. I'd never heard music sung in Japanese, except Japanese folk songs, and a Japanese production of Sondheim's PACIFIC OVERTURES that came to NY a couple of years ago. (That same Japanese company came back the next year and did the same production in English; it was great both times.) These singers did a great job with the language, which apparently half of them don't speak. They were, according to the Japanese people around me, well coached. But I have to say, though it's probably wrong and shallow of me to say it, that my favorite part of the evening was the costumes. Not that they were elaborate. But a stageful of characters dressed in a large variety of Japanese textiles, coming and going! I could have just sat there and watched that, all night.