One of the first events in the current flood of Chinese opera events to be hosted by the CKS Cultural Foundation will be performed at the National Concert Hall in Taipei tomorrow. Listening to Chinese Opera II (
The initiative to bring over some of the best exponents of regional opera from China to perform in Taiwan has been led by Tseng Yung-yi (
PHOTO COURTESY OF CKS CULTURAL CENTER
Bringing together different forms of opera into a single concert is relatively rare occurrence. The reason for doing so is to reveal the diversity of traditional Chinese theater and seek new ways to expound its relevance to a modern public.
While Pu-style opera can trace its ancestry to the kind of singing that might have been heard in the court of Qin Shi Wang (秦始王), the first emperor of China, Hu-style opera had its heyday in the 1930s, drawing on the influences of Hollywood movies and the urban lifestyle that had developed in Shanghai at that time.
Listening to Chinese Opera II, with its diversity of styles, is the perfect prelude to 11 performances of Chinese opera, with seven groups visiting from China. The concert will be held at 7:30pm at the National Concert Hall and tickets are NT$200 to NT$400.
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