NCPA adapts Cao Yu's play to opera stage

A poster of Sunrise [Photo/Xinhua]

The National Center for the Performing Arts has staged its latest opera production. Adapted from renowned work of the late playwright Cao Yu, the Western-style opera integrates Chinese traditional music and Peking Opera into the symphony.

It is a tribute to the 80th anniversary of Sunrise. Written in 1935, the play is one of the representative works of Cao Yu, the founding father of modern Chinese theater. The story is set in a big city in the 1930s, when people struggled living a luxurious, yet ultimately empty life.

For Song Yuanming, the leading soprano, the work is quite challenging.

The adaptation of the play to a Western-style opera was accomplished by Wan Fang, the daughter of the late playwright. She simplified plots and characters to fit the story into the opera form.

Director Li Liuyi, who is more familiar with audiences as a theater director, targets the theme of the story at how human beings make choices under certain circumstances.

The new exploration has endowed new vigor into the well-known story. The opera even brings Peking Opera performances out on stage.

For Song Yuanming, who studied opera in Vienna and has been awarded internationally for her performances in Western repertoires, Sunrise is a brand new experience.

"We have to cope with the difficult parts in the vocals, as the composer integrates a lot of Chinese music elements into the music. I have borrowed some experiences from performing Western works," Song said.

The three-hour long opera is the seventh Chinese opera production at the National Center for the Performing Arts and took three years to go from script to stage.

Sunrise will be performed until Sunday.