On February 15^th, 2005, we visited Mr. Chen Cheng-shiung, who had been the Chief of Taipei Chinese Music Orchestra for seven years, and the Chief of Taiwan Orchestra for eleven years. We were there to know about his working experience with the Ming Hwa Yan.
He said the first time he worked together with the Ming Hwa Yuan was to produce the play, “Liu Quan Presents Melon”. It was also the first time that the Ming Hwa Yuan adopted Chinese music orchestra to accompany its drama. Chen Sheng-fu gave the whole repertoire of the drama to Chinese music orchestra to compile Chinese music score, and adjust actors’ key to fit music tone.
Because most of the Ming Hwa Yuan’s actors are lack of general capacity of music, they sometimes sing with higher key, then their key may just go higher and higher. In the end, the key of the orchestra just cannot match the actors’ key. It took both sides a pretty long time to rehearsal and practice to solve this problem.

Speaking of his expectation on Taiwanese Opera, Mr. Chen thinks that the music serves to accompany each performance on the stage. In the process of cooperating with Taiwanese Opera, he insisted to adopt Eastern and Western music instruments to distinguish the native feature of Taiwanese Opera. Some of the early theatric forms may be too vulgar to develop. Those dramatic forms ignored the function of music. Such primitive theatric forms used repetitive music score throughout the entire scene. Mr. Chen said, if possible, he will be glad to help other theatric forms.
However, Mr. Chen said his help might still be of limited use. In his opinion, the best way to improve should start from offering comprehensive music education to every theatric forms. He suggested that Taiwanese Opera, as an outstanding local theatric form in Taiwan, should try its best to breathe new life into music from contemporary perspectives.