All about the basso

From performing with Pavarotti, to establishing his own arts festival, accomplished opera singer Tian Haojiang recounts stories from his stellar career in new autobiography, Chen Nan reports.

About three years ago, when Tian Haojiang, a Beijing-born, New York-based basso opera singer, found himself facing a whole season without any performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like many other performing arts professionals, he decided to do something that he had been planning for years: to write an autobiography that reviews his music career and life over the past four decades.

"I am not a writer and I just followed my intuition to review my life as an opera singer. Word by word, I spent three years writing my stories, about 200,000 words, way beyond my expectations," says Tian, 68, who has earned recognition with 1,400 performances in 50 operatic roles worldwide.

"I once wrote continuously for 15 hours, about 20,000 to 30,000 words, in one day. Then I deleted them all. The writing process was full of revision, and I discovered with great pleasure that, from the moment I started writing, my memory expanded. It grew and grew, becoming more detailed," Tian adds. "It's much like the process of preparing myself for a new opera production. I will think about the lines, the movements and even my expression before I actually play a character. I also thought very carefully about the words I chose to write in the book. It might be a result of my being a Virgo."

The book, titled Turandot at the Arena, was published by SDX Joint Publishing Co on June 25.