What you should know first and foremost about The Peony Pavilion, a 16th-century Chinese musical drama about love, death, and resurrection, and arguably the most famous of all kunqu operas, is that its poetry can kill. It has killed before. Passion is its currency, and when expressed through kun - a sophisticated art form that fuses poetry, dance, and refined woodwind ensemble, not to mention fabulous costumes and makeup - and with a story line rivaling Romeo and Juliet - its performances literally stopped a few attendants' hearts in the audience during the late Ming Dynasty.

"Yes, it was said some women fainted after seeing it, and one actress actually expired on stage after finishing the dying aria [about love pains]," confirms anthropologist Lindy Li Mark. Mark translated Xianzu's poetry into English to be read as subtitles when the opera comes to Zellerbach Hall theater at Berkeley this September. "Here comes a play that portrays women's feelings - especially sexual feelings - so sympathetically that it became an instant hit."

Why that is so is not difficult to understand. The Peony Pavilion was written in an era when China was going through a rigid, repressive style of Neo-Confucianism known as Daoxue. It emphasized proper outward displays of behavior and rituals. Living by the book became the ruling orthodoxy. This dismayed Xianzu, a retired court official. Fascinated with the regenerative power of authentic, true emotions, the concept known in Chinese as qing - translated variously as love, desire, and/or passion - he wrote The Peony Pavilion as a direct challenge and criticism to Daoxue.

"Peony Pavilion is so much more than a love story," notes Xianzu professor Andrea Goldman, who earned her doctorate at Berkeley and now teaches Chinese history at the University of Maryland. "It's also a scathing indictment of the limitations of the super-rationalist, but rather clueless, world of Neo-Confucian politics. In launching his critique of society, Xianzu, like many of his contemporaries, also borrowed freely from Buddhist and Daoist philosophical concepts. After all, Li-niang's love is so strong that it has the power to last three lifetimes - and karmic rebirth was a notion drawn from the Buddhist tradition."

The play, originally composed with 55 scenes that included more than 400 arias of poetry, and with spoken dialogue, was produced in its entirety only a few times in the years right after it was written. Performing the unabridged version could take as long as a week, challenging audiences and the performers. The current Kenneth Pai production, touring the U.S. in the fall, has been shortened to 27 scenes running for three evenings, three hours each night.

Even the shortened version was an enormous undertaking, Pai says. Pai handpicked the young lead actors, and each underwent a year of rehearsing, despite having previously studied kunqu for the required four years. It's a refined art, one in which singing is supported by the transverse bamboo flute, in unison. Additional plucked, bowed, and various percussion instruments make up the ensemble. Highly ornamented melodies require fine breath control and careful phrasing, Pai explains. In addition, singers must simultaneously execute exact and graceful choreographed dance movements, amplified by flowing silk sleeves that extend two or more feet beyond the hands.

In the drama, Tu Li-niang, the young daughter of a high official, meets a young scholar named Liu Meng-mei in a dream. In a scene that many scholars regard as the most erotic in all of Chinese poetry, the two have a tryst in a garden of peonies. Li-niang awakens and pines for her phantasmal lover, then dies, leaving behind a self-portrait. He discovers her painting, and falls in love with her. Then the Underworld judge, moved by her beauty and her undying love, returns her to the mortal world. She appears to Meng-mei as a ghost, and they again consummate their love. Meng-mei digs her up, whereby her soul rejoins her body. They elope, and, after a number of trials - the bulk of which involves trying to convince her father, who embodies Daoxue rigidity, that she is not a demon, and that her lover is not a grave robber - the emperor pardons all.

The abridged version preserves the love story, with all its supernatural peculiarities, such as the dream lovers coupling in the peony pavilion while being shielded by flower fairies. The narrative bears remarkable similarities to the imagination of Shakespeare, who died the same year as Xianzu. Both authors relied on supernatural forces to further their plots. The Flower Goddess, for instance, who brought the dream lovers together in Peony, is almost interchangeable with Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream or The Tempest's Ariel.

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