13 to 17) and “A Village Teacher” (March 7 to 9). A comic opera festival mounted by the Beijing impresario Li Wei, who reportedly wants “to make Western opera a common art,” will begin on Thursday, and the NCPA will mark Christmas Eve and Christmas with a “World Classic Opera Gala,” followed by its production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” (Feb. Indeed, this year alone has seen the establishment of an Academy of Opera at Peking University the second annual NCPA Opera Festival, with 12 different operas performed in 10 weeks the premiere of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in Shanghai the grand opening of the $202 million Zaha Hadid-designed Guangzhou Center for the Performing Arts the performance of three operas (Handel’s “Semele,” Zhou Long’s “Madame White Snake” and Ye Xiaogang’s “Song of Farewell”) in just one week at the Beijing Music Festival and a Sino-European Summit for the Performing Arts that brought directors of major European institutions like the Barbican (London), the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris) and Deutsche Oper Berlin to Beijing to exchange experiences with Chinese counterparts. “Opera development is like a miniature of the country,” said Chen Zuohuang, music director of the NCPA (and the conductor of “Xi Shi”).
After years spent building spectacular, state-of-the art opera houses in major metropolises and unheralded backwaters, China is experiencing a boom in opera production, opera education and original opera creation. Such performances, both public and private, are just the tip of an emerging phenomenon. The gift bag - de rigueur at such events - contained a lavishly illustrated history of Viennese operetta penned by the building’s opera-loving developer, Adam Yu. That same night, across town in the financial district, couture-clad financiers and diplomats flooded the atrium of Winland International Financial Center - which is decorated with a 10-story mural of the operatic princess Turandot - for a private performance of Viennese operetta given by the China National Symphony Orchestra and singers who were flown in for the event. When it had its premiere in April, the opera was hailed by some here as evidence of China becoming a great cultural power.
BEIJING - On the frosty first Saturday of December, crowds packed the opera house of the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing to see “Xi Shi,” an original NCPA production (composed by Lei Lei with libretto by Zou Jingzhi) that tells the tragic tale of the eponymous beauty from ancient China.
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