The Shanghai stage is setting off a "opera fever". For two consecutive weekends, the Shanghai Opera House staged two major plays of "Turandot" and "Kingdom of Smiles", both of which were difficult to find. On March 2, the Shangyin Opera House released the 2022 performance season, and the original national opera "Kangding Love Song", the "La Traviata" co-produced by Shangyin and the German Kiel Opera House, and the Shanghai Opera House's "Wandering Dutchman" also attracted the attention of music fans. The tentacles of the opera also extend to the five new cities, and at the Nine Trees Future Art Center in Fengxian, audiences will have the opportunity to listen to "Morning Bell" at the outdoor Forest Theater and "La Traviata" at the Waterfront Theater.
Opera is known as "the jewel in the crown of musical art". The Sydney Opera House, the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Teatro all la Scala in Milan are world-famous art halls and cultural calling cards of their respective cities. In the near future, the Shanghai Grand Opera House will be built in the Pudong Expo Cultural Park, like a Chinese folding fan slowly unfolding along the Huangpu River.
Renderings of the Shanghai Grand Opera House
To benchmark the world-class opera house and help build the "Performing Arts Capital of Asia", there are still many questions worth thinking about: how to launch sustained high-quality performances? How to cultivate excellent opera talents? Where do the audience come from?
From the classroom to the stage, cultivate the stars of the future
On March 2, at the same time as the launch of the 2022 performance season, Shangyin Opera House officially announced that Liao Changyong was appointed as the first president and artistic director of Shangyin Opera House, and Yu Long, Zhang Guoyong, Xu Zhong, Sun Hong, Zhang Liang, Zhou Xianglin, Chen Ming, Shi Mingyang and Guo Sen were appointed as members of the first Shangyin Opera House Art Committee, which was an important step for Shangyin Opera House to improve its artistic standards and integrate with the international management system.
Liao Changyong, president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, served as the first president and artistic director of the Shangyin Opera House
Alexandre Pereira, former artistic director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, still remembers coming to China in 2019 with the entire cast of the Teatro alla Scala to perform "The Girl Pretending to be a Gardener" and "The Magic Flute" at the Shangyin Opera House. Pereira, who once praised the "world-class" Shangyin Opera House, sent a video this time to congratulate the release of the new performance season of the Shangyin Opera House, hoping to have more cooperation in the field of art in the future.
Seeing the menu of the 2022 performance season of the Shangyin Opera House, The Chairman of Showa University of Music in Japan, Kyosuke Shimohakawa, said: "The performance season shows the cultural vision of Shanghai as an international metropolis. From 2015 to the present, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Showa University of Music in Japan have collaborated on a series of opera projects such as "The Wedding of Figaro", and Shimohakawa Hasenyou has also witnessed how the young generation of outstanding opera talents can emerge on the stage.
He is a member of the Art Committee of The Shangyin Opera House
This year, the Shangyin Opera House performance season also set up a special "Future Star" section to give the stage to more young people. "This is an important part of our talent training model of 'integration of education, innovation, performance and research'." Liao Changyong, president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and president of the Shangyin Opera House, said, "We have turned the Shangyin Opera House into an immersive opera classroom, relying on important music festivals such as the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival and the China Shanghai International Arts Festival to achieve a leap from classroom to stage. ”
Liao Changyong believes that in a metropolis like Shanghai, the differentiated positioning of different theaters is very important, which is the inevitable benign competition in the performing arts market. "I hope that the Shangyin Opera House and the future Shanghai Grand Opera House can achieve linkage in academic research, talent training, and international exchanges, and better promote the development of China's opera industry."
Perform Western classics well and tell Chinese stories well
"Turandot", "Kingdom of Smiles", "Bohemian", "Wandering Dutchman", Shanghai Opera House's 2022 spring/summer performance season has launched four classic opera productions in a row; the joining of opera stars such as Hui, Shi Yijie, Shen Yang, and the italian opera director Marco Caniti and the German Erfurt Theater are all guarantees of box office and artistic standards. In addition to Western classics, the national opera "Sister Jiang" and the original opera "Morning Bell" are also the focus of the Spring and Summer Performance Season of Shanghai Opera House. This month, "Morning Bell" will also complete a tour in the Yangtze River Delta.
The Shanghai Opera House "Turandot" is in rehearsal
In the menu of the Shangyin Opera House, the original Chinese opera is also the highlight. In recent years, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music has launched original operas such as "Tang Xianzu" and "He Luting", and will soon launch new works such as operas such as "Sentinel under Neon Lights" and "Kangding Love Song", and the opera film "He Luting" will also land on the big screen. In January this year, the concert version of the opera "Kangding Love Song" was first premiered at the Shangyin Opera House, with Zhou Zheng, Jin Yao, Chen Jingwei, Chen Yang, Hu Sihao, Zhang Gonghao and a number of teachers and students of the Vocal Department leading the AB role, and the Shangyin Symphony Orchestra, the Opera Troupe, the Orchestra Department, the Vocal Department and other teachers and students jointly performed, giving full play to the multidisciplinary linkage advantage of the upper tone.
Concert version of the original opera "Kangding Love Song"
"We need to find a voice that the whole world can understand and tell the story of our nation." Xu Zhong, President of Shanghai Opera House and member of the Art Committee of Shangyin Opera House, said, "When we have a world-class opera house, how can we promote the development of Chinese opera, lead the trend of Asian opera, and attract the attention of the whole world? I hope that opera and diverse art forms can show endless charm here, so that the world can listen to the voice of Shanghai. ”
From February 25 to 26, the Shanghai Opera House "Kingdom of Smiles" was staged at the Oriental Art Center
Xu Zhong understood that opera is a long and huge project, and it is impossible to pull up seedlings and grow, and it is impossible to become famous overnight. "To continue to launch good works, but also to ensure the standard, to be orderly, to test the strength of actors and behind-the-scenes workers, but also to test the management ability."
Let more people understand opera and fall in love with opera
“Bravo！” When the aria "Nobody Sleeps Tonight" was sung, the scene erupted in applause. On the afternoon of March 1st, at the Jiukeshu (Shanghai) Future Art Center, more than 200 spectators enjoyed the "Riding on the Wings of Opera" opera appreciation meeting brought by the shanghai opera house performers. Next, the Shanghai Opera House will have 30 opera popularization public welfare performances here.
"We didn't dare to do opera before because it had a threshold for appreciation, which was difficult for some audiences to understand." Chen Xijia, general manager of Nine Trees Future Art Center, said. Nine Trees Future Art Center is located in Fengxian New Town, far from the city center, and was under great operational pressure when it first opened.
"There is no audience, only an audience can be created." The "100 People and 100 Future Masters" series of concerts priced at 30 yuan to 50 yuan has experienced a process from no one buying tickets to one ticket for each show, which has made Chen Xijia firm in confidence.
Just after performing two German-language operas "The Kingdom of Smiles" last weekend, soprano Song Qian spent two days in retreat to prepare for the appreciation. While speaking and acting, the challenge is not small, and the content is still adjusted at 4:30 a.m. that day. In her 8 years of travel, she combines her own experience and experience to tell the origin and development of European opera. Together with the actors of the Shanghai Opera House, she also performed classic songs from operas such as "Turandot", "La Traviata", "The Barber of Seville", "Tonhauser" and so on. Song Qian said: "The most important thing for popularization is to convey the soul and ideas of music to the audience, and at the same time tell the story of food, clothing, shelter, love and hate in opera, so that the audience can find that opera is actually not so far away from us." ”
On March 1, the shanghai opera house performers held an opera appreciation meeting at the Nine Trees Future Art Center
Xu Zhong revealed that this project will also land in other "new cities" such as Songjiang and Jiading to serve a wider audience. "The pyramid must have a solid foundation, we need world-class creators, actors, and more opera fans. Cultivating the audience is a long project, we hope that through more high-quality performances and rich artistic education activities, more and more people will understand opera, fall in love with opera, and find beauty in opera. ”