TD: I heard through friends and Kunqu companies telling me about this. To put a Kunqu opera into a garden – this is a true story – it happened before the [2010] China Expo in Shanghai. I was in a suburb of Shanghai, sort of a Ming Dynasty village doing some volunteer work. I was in a garden there one afternoon having tea. Suddenly, everything became so magical. In that moment, the insects and the bird sounds were so beautiful. A gust of chill wind very quickly came up. My friends wanted me to move in but it stopped in just a few minutes. The sounds of the birds came back and I thought it was so dramatic and organic. I thought to myself, my god, this is opera, the sound of the birds, the insects and the wind. I felt the garden start to awaken as a sleeping beauty. I realized that every song in this garden can talk to me. I said this is why the Ming Dynasty people put opera here, rather than a stage. I want to do The Peony Pavilion in a garden.

So, I had this idea before the China Expo. It was my fourth time doing Kunqu opera. I love Kunqu, because, as a composer, you have to search for yourself and where you come from. I found myself very much sticking to this art form, the linear way of sound format and very detailed vocalizations.

The first time I really got into Kunqu was after the Cultural Revolution I met a beautiful revolutionary opera singer– it is Yang Chunxia. She sang revolutionary operas. To me, she is a very powerful revolutionary singer. I love her; she is so beautiful. Once, as a new composition student, I met her husband and he took me to her home. She said, 'You don't know the real side of me, I'm not that revolutionary, I'm very feminine. I want to sing something for you that's my first nature. My second nature is revolutionary opera, but my first nature is Kunqu.' She sang The Peony Pavilion for me. I immediately decided to be a composer for this kind of sound. I told her: 'I want to do The Peony Pavilion with you.'

At that time, in the beginning of the 1980s when you were constructing this garden I was in Beijing establishing the first electronic music studio there. We did the first electronic accompaniment to Peony Pavilion. It's called 'Awakening in the Garden.' It was with [Yang Chunxia's] voice. It was a fantastic experience.

The second time, I met this wonderful dancer. His name is Shen Wei. One of the best.

MH: Yes, Shen Wei, he performed in the United States. He performed here last May in the American wing courtyard.

TD: He's a superstar in the dance field. Before he was famous we did something together. It was a kind of dance ballet with completely naked dancers. It was about gardens and flowers and using the context of sound and bodies—skin and wind.

The third time, I worked with Peter Sellers for a sort of rock version.

MH: I'm sorry, with Xun Wei you did an adaptation of the Peony Pavilion? And they danced it… did they sing the arias or was it completely recorded music?

TD: Yes, it was Yang Chunxia's recording, and it was on a stage.

With the [1998] Peter Sellers version we had a rock and roll experience combined with Ming Dynasty traditions.

So, until the Shanghai garden it was my fifth time [staging Peony Pavilion]. I finally decided to put it in a garden and go back to the Ming Dynasty way. It's because of that afternoon tea, in the Shanghai garden. The sounds of the garden are more melodic than melody sounds.

MH: It was actually in the garden space you decided this.

TD: Yes, I've also found it interesting that in every major city I've conducted in—New York, Munich, London—they have a Chinese garden or Oriental landscape. Most of those gardens are gifts or are from Chinese sister cities or local Chinese people's contributions. They are so beautiful, but sort of like Sleeping Beauties. Not much happening. The local people don't know how to nurture the garden. It's not just having beautiful flowers, it's also interesting sound of birds and the interesting people who come there to read poetry, compose opera and composers who come to get inspiration. This is all the Ming Dynasty cultural phenomenon. Maybe, like Ming Dynasty scholars, we should soak ourselves in the garden. Some nature and inner thoughts. They wanted to melt the inner voice into the outside music of nature.

So inside is out, outside is in; and that made me crazy when I first visited your garden.

MH: I was so impressed when you arrived. Tan Dun is a bit like a force of nature. I had already visualized how the opera was going to be staged—I thought. It's a very rectangular space and there is a Ming furniture room and in front of that there is a granite platform called a Yue Tai or 'moon viewing terrace'. I thought that would make the perfect stage and we'll put the chairs in front of the stage and it will be very organized. Tan Dun walks in and says: 'No.' (laughter)

TD: Actually, it's a very beautiful space when you're facing the courtyard and when you're facing the chambers it is a beautiful space too. Of course, your option is the natural stage, but I realized because the garden is a platform, people can sit in the space instead of outside the space. Normally, near the garden they have reading rooms and people wanted to hear the sounds of the garden when they composed music or poetry or when reading. I thought if we could bring this all inside to outside expressions, then maybe we should do a diagonal and have the audience stay in the diagonal and the left side would be the garden pavilion—a perfect Peony Pavilion—and the other side is the chambers. For this version, we trimmed almost 20 or 30 hours of the singing into four major sections of the opera structure.

The first section is 'Awakening in the Garden' when the girl has love sickness and she died of love. In the second, the judge [of the afterlife] says it's ridiculous, he never heard of anybody dying of love sickness. In the third, the scholar is making love to the ghost and the fourth is resurrection. These are the four major structures of the 30 hours of this opera and today you will see something very interesting. Very minimal. The space, the sounds, the voices, will stretch time. In this diagonal space you can see the pavilion and the chambers—sort of an otherworldly space that can be divided.

MH: That's what made it so brilliant because you tied the water at one end of the diagonal to the pavilion, and the rock where Du Liniang was buried, to the main room of the chambers with the furniture, and even a corridor where she can come in so there were ways for the actors to move back and forth along that diagonal space. As you visualized it, you could divide this world from the netherworld as well.

TD: And speaking of this world and the other world, there are six channels of surrounding sound. In the beginning you will hear the fishpond on the far left side. Then you will hear the gong. In the Ming Dynasty, operas always started with the gong. Then you experience the sound of the fishpond traveling across the room, back into the Ming Dynasty. The sound travels around the circle and goes back, fading away, and then the Chinese zither comes in, carrying on the water sounds. That symbolizes the transformation, fading of time and space into the past.

MH: It's like the unrolling of the hand scroll because when you unroll a hand scroll you cross the section of brocade before you enter the painting proper. That brocade is called the ge shui – 'the moat.' Every Chinese painting from the Ming Dynasty on you almost invariably see a little stream with a bridge and the viewer is invited to cross the bridge. It's also the movement of time and space; you're leaving your world behind and entering into the world of the painting. You've recreated this with the use of sound. You transform us into this Ming world and also from New York into Suzhou. The American fish are now in China, and so are we.

TD: There is no way to imitate the Ming Dynasty because we have electricity now, we have computers now. Actually, this performance is the most organic but the most scientific, technology-wise. Everything is driven by technology. It's a very organic garden. This is a world premier, in a sense, because everything is new with sound installations. We divide the sound format into three rings. The sound without the microphones is the operatic performance, but in the story, if somebody in the dream wants to make love to an outside world spirit you will hear the sound more remotely acted. It because a sort of voice calligraphy. The echo of the actor's voice hangs in the air. For example, when the girl awakens she is searching for the scholar and you hear his voice first from one direction, and then the other direction. She is chasing the sound around in the garden. That reminds me of ladies chasing butterflies. Like children, loving to chase whatever they can chase. As a musician, I love to chase the sounds.

When I was in the garden in Shanghai and I felt the wind sweeping up quickly and when the birds came up again I could hear exactly where the birds came up and where they went away. The pitch rose, coming and going. That kind of experience is what we wanted.