Taipei's popular Red House Theater (
One of the nation's leading exponents of Nankuan, or Southern Winds music -- a form of Chinese opera originating in Fujian Province over 2,000 years ago -- the HTYF was founded in 1983 by Nankuan aficionado, Chen Mei-o (
Since then the HTYF has received high praise and been the recipient of many musical and cultural awards, at home and abroad. The group picked up two Golden Cauldron (
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAN-TANG YUEFU ENSEMBLE
Along with performing Nankuan opera, the HTYF has successfully crossed the cultural divide of east and west and performed an adaptation of Jerome Bosch's Le Jardin des Delices at the prestigious Opera Comique Theatre in Paris in 2000.
While preserving the age-old Nankuan tradition, the HTYF has also breathed new life into Liyuan opera (
This more recent form of Nankuan blends southern-styled traditional operatic music and song with the delicate, hypnotic and at times slow-motion movements of the troupe's dancers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAN-TANG YUEFU ENSEMBLE
Wednesday's performance will comprise a mixed bag of Nankuan. The first half of the evening will see the troupe performing three scenes from the classic Nankuan opera The Time We Met (
The Han-Tang Yuefu (
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