Chinese Opera Festival

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Since its inception in 2010, the Chinese Opera Festival has strived to curate quality operatic programmes for its audience, with the aim of promoting the artistry and culture of Chinese traditional opera. Now, after a three-year hiatus, the Festival is once again bringing theatre-goers an assembly of outstanding opera troupes specialising in different theatrical genres.

Featured in the Festival this year are nine programmes, all specially handpicked for their unique characteristics, which will showcase the splendour of Chinese operatic art in all its glory. In particular, three versions of The Legend of the White Snake, each different in terms of their theatrical genre, will be performed during the Festival.

First, the Peking Opera Theatre of Beijing will open the Festival with performances featuring Wang Rongrong, disciple of the highly esteemed actor of the former generation, Zhang Junqiu, and recipient of the China Theatre Plum Blossom Award. She will perform the Zhang School´s renowned piece Top Scholar as Matchmaker and Jinshan Temple, The Broken Bridge and Leifeng Pagoda. The Zhang School is distinguished by its eclectic, dulcet and charming singing style. Returning to the Festival is the notable Zhejiang Wu Opera Research Centre, which will execute a seamless integration of martial arts into White Snake, a production from the civil category, and a number of excerpts. Their excerpt from White Snake – The Broken Bridge has long been acclaimed as the ‘number one Bridge presentation’ which will definitely dazzle the audience with a spectacular display of martial arts prowess. Sichuan Opera Troupe will present their version of White Snake and A Marriage as a Peace Pact in an eye-opening display of masterly skills for which the troupe is famous. Their White Snake performance is richly imbued with the flavours of Sichuan, with the White Snake role incorporating both civil and martial skills and the Green Snake role appearing alternately as male and female.

The Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theatre of Jiangsu will again present to the Hong Kong audience its three-part full version of The Peony Pavilion – The Youth Version with the original cast. The version has been taken on numerous tours and staged more than 300 times since its premiere in 2004. Seasoned artists Shen Fengying and Yu Jiulin will team up once more to render this love story by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) that transcends life and death.

In ‘The Art of Wusheng Roles in Cantonese Opera’, celebrated wusheng (male martial) actor Liu Kwok-sum will partner with opera stars such as Lee Lung, Wan Fai-yin and Yuen Siu-fai to reprise some of the masterpieces of the late ‘King of the Wusheng Role’ Lan Chi Pak, including his stylised routines of ‘carriage riding skill’ from Prime Minister of Six States, and his acting in wusheng role from Contention for the Seal, which is seldom performed on stage in recent years, as well as the horse-burying paichang (formulaic) scene.

For their debut in the Festival, the Wuhan Han Opera Theatre will give the audience a taste of the glamour of Han Opera by bringing together a number of National Class One Performers to present the Han Opera classics The Cosmic Sword and When the Plum Tree Blooms Again. The Festival will also introduce the Hong Kong audience to the Qu Opera of Henan, a regional variety of Chinese opera which is less flamboyant in presentation style compared to other genres, as can be seen in a depiction of aspects of folk life by the Centre for the Safeguarding of Qu Opera of Henan. As for the irresistible Yue Opera, the Festival will feature ten laureates of the China Theatre Plum Blossom Award from six different troupes, who will together fuse boundaries by performing a representative repertoire of the four major xiaosheng (young man role) stylistic schools in Yue Opera. It is truly a rare stellar cast not to be missed.

The grand finale of the Festival will take place at a large makeshift bamboo theatre erected at Victoria Park, where productions from the traditional Cantonese Opera repertoire will be staged. This is meant to be a significant moment of rejoicing which signals the end of the pandemic in Hong Kong. As with previous years, the Festival will feature a number of extension activities in addition to stage performances, including talks, meet-the-artists sessions, exhibitions and Chinese opera film screenings, for a good balance between stage performances and guided appreciation. We hope everyone attending the Festival will have a highly enjoyable, rewarding and educational journey.