The stage is set
Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot was brought to China by the opera house in 1989 and in April 1990, the concert version debuted in Beijing. Since then, Turandot has become one of its most popular productions. From Monday to Wednesday, the opera will be performed again, featuring soprano Sun Xiuwei and tenor Warren Mok in the leading roles.
The opera house will also celebrate its history with a concert dedicated to original Chinese operas on May 14, with programs including arias from Chinese operas The White-Haired Girl, Liu Hulan and The Red Detachment of Women.
The history of the opera house dates back to the 1940s, when the Central Orchestra and the Lu Xun School of Arts premiered Brother and Sister Reclaiming Wasteland, combining Chinese folk songs and yangko (a popular folk dance form of Shaanxi province), in Yan'an, Shaanxi province, the former revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China. Artists of the Central Orchestra and the Lu Xun School of Arts were the founders of the China National Opera House.
In 1945, The White-Haired Girl premiered in Yan'an, which became a sensation. It was the first Chinese opera composed after Chairman Mao Zedong's speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art in 1942, and is regarded as a milestone in the development of Chinese opera.
