Last week, we heard some talking head comment that all Sarah Palin had to do to beat expectations was come out of her VP debate without losing a limb. That's how we felt going to the last performance of the Bonesetter's Daughter, especially after reading some excruciating reviews.

OK, there were some mildly favorable reviews (as well as a a comprehensive review list.) And while our natural inclination is to be indulgent with operatic world premieres, we had to fight our apprehensions with the unknown. But we want to reward risk taking on the part of SF Opera director David Gockley, and would like to see more gambits like this one in the future. Even if some of them will fall flat.

To our surprise, we enjoyed the Bonesetter's Daughter thanks to splendid performances by Zheng Cao and Qian Yi. Cao gets to sing two parts, as the opera weaves its way between the present and the past, retracing the adventures of the young LuLing from the sticks of China to her current mother-daughter relationship in San Francisco circa 1997.

Picture Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera

Cao, who performs two characters, manages to give each of them distinct personalities and voices. We knew her as an outstanding Suzuki in the bi-yearly production of Madame Butterfly, but she is equally impressive here in the leading role.

Precious Auntie, the ghost of LuLing's mother, is sung by Qian Yi, a Chinese opera performer with a nasal-y voice, makes use of long glissandos to punctuate her sentences. It's a very traditional Chinese singing voice, and composer Stewart Wallace does a good job at integrating this vernacular into his writing. Her a capella arias are breath taking.

Since Qian Yi and other Chinese performers usually sing to smaller audiences and are not trained in filling up a cavernous hall like the War Memorial Opera house, the singers are amplified. Which? Works fine for the singing, but all the spoken lines sound outrageously artificial.

Wallace's score is a nice blend of some fluid contemporary music (if a bit predictable) and a Chinese palette of sounds. However, the Chinese influence never comes off as artificial but as fully integrated. We really liked the prologue, and its return at the end of the flashback to China. We would have ended the opera right there, actually, as the last scene of forgiveness back in SF is dull and superfluous, both musically and within the story telling. We enjoyed the bagpipe sounding suonas, some Chinese trumpets with reeds; and they get some nice riffs which had us consider a jazz use for the instrument. The score tends to emphasize climaxes a bit too regularly. Stewart should keep the listener guessing a bit more.

Other performers don't demerit, in particular Ning Liang as the contemporary LuLing, or Hao Juang Tian as the evilest coffin maker, or Wu Tong (Chef, Tao Priest) singing of happiness and playing one of the suonas, or James Maddalena in a small part as Ruth's husband Art. The dramatic stage setting includes over-the-top acrobats flying across the stage. It has a TV special feel to it, for sure.

The Bonesetter's Daughter has its moments, but it's far from an unqualified success. The reason: a poor, nonsensical libretto by SF's own Amy Tan. The over-arching theme is that of guilt in the mother-daughter relationship. It comes in as the relationship between Ruth with her step-daughters (they're obnoxious teenager, obviously guilty), and between Ruth and her mother. An O.J. aria (we'd rather not go into details here) ends on the words guilty, and segues into Ruth remembering (on the melody of Nature boy) her own teenage years and arguing she was not guilty . We go: yeah right, not guilty, just like O.J. Precious Auntie whines that she gave her daughter a dragon bone, and LuLing did not care, because she's yet another evil teenager. Ruth attempts to assuage her guilt by giving her mom a mink coat (costumes, except for this ragged pink mink coat, are spectacular).

And that's why the libretto fails: it's built on a fraught definition of mother-daughter's relationship, where teen-age girls are wrong to rebel, and daughters are guilty for crosses their mothers were bearing before they were even born!

The opera's premise is either: a) LuLing is haunted by her past; yet, when visiting said past, it turns out she's been avenged! She's left the ghosts behind! The evil guy has been killed and even castrated, and not in that order. Or b), and the lyrics hint at this interpretation, Ruth visits the past to change it, back-to-the-future style; but why is it incumbent on the daughter to clean that mess. And more importantly, why should she feel guilty about that past?

So we get these silent mothers (LuLing, Precious Auntie) who mutely carry their secrets, and these daughters accused of foolishness, or asked to perform miracles to understand what the mothers refuse to tell them. And guilty they are if they don't! And guilty they should feel! That does not make any sense to us. Once the opera escapes the guilt trips into a dramatic visit of China, it turns rather effective. When it comes back to it, it drowns into mush.