Shanghai Troupe Presents Ancient Opera at Asia Society The Shanghai Kunqu Opera made its biggest news in New York when it failed to show up. This is the company that was to have presented Chen Shi-Zheng's 19-hour production of "The Peony Pavilion," the Chinese opera written by Tang Xianzu in 1598, at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1998, but Shanghai municipal authorities blocked the troupe's departure for political reasons. When the production did appear, in 1999, with performers gathered from around China, only the star, Qian Yi, and the flutist and orchestra leader, Zhou Ming, remained from the original troupe. The Lanke Mountain , an ancient tale, with Yuan Guo Liang, left, and Chen Li, of the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe, at Asia Society. The Shanghai company has since made lower-profile appearances in New York, and on Friday it returned with a full-evening production of "The Lanke Mountain," an opera based on an ancient folk tale that has been staged at least since the 13th century, at Asia Society. The story, set in the Han dynasty (third century B.C.), could not be simpler, and its moral gave rise to the Chinese proverb "Poured water cannot be retrieved." Cui Shi - married to an impoverished scholar, Zhu Maichen, who has failed the examination for a government position repeatedly over two decades - loses patience (actually, you suspect from the portrayal that she never did have much) and leaves him for a carpenter. That marriage doesn't satisfy her either, and when Zhu finally passes the examination and is named county magistrate, she begs him to take her back. "I'll have a bowl of water poured in front of my horse," Zhu says. If you can return all the water back to the bowl, I'll take you back. Unable to do so, Cui goes mad, frantically tries to collect water from a stream and drowns. Her role is unusual in kunqu (pronounced kun-SHU), the oldest and most refined form of Chinese opera, which grew up around Shanghai. "It is so unusual," says the Web site of the Society of Kunqu Arts Inc. (kunqu.org) in Silver Spring, Md., "that a special role-type is named after it in kunqu theater: the "sleeves-rolled-up female role" (qiao xiu dan). Cui is a woman of such unruly emotions that throughout the play she has her long sleeves, used in kunqu theater to show delicate feelings, rolled up, demonstrating her perpetually belligerent nature. The role was played here by Chen Li, a former classmate of Qian Yi's. Ms. Qian now lives in New York. Obviously, Ms. Chen was also a good student, although she played Cui so gracefully and fetchingly that it was hard to take her shrewishness entirely seriously. She was, in any case, a joy to watch and hear. Yuan Guo Liang, as Zhu, was an apt foil. Several comic characters filled out the cast, and their patter included a few nods to the occasion, with smatterings of English ("O.K., let's go"; "Ah, very good"). Typically, the costumes were gorgeous and the sets spare (basically, a table and two chairs) but beautifully decorated. We have encountered too little Chinese opera in New York in the decade or so since the Taipei Theater gave up the ghost: certainly, little on this level. Here's hoping that Asia Society will step up its commitment to this rarefied and treasurable art form.