Opening acts

This year's upcoming Beijing Music Festival will kick off with two groundbreaking stage productions by Chinese-American director Chen Shi-zheng, Chen Nan reports.

With its quiet, tree-lined streets and courtyard houses, an old neighborhood in the southwest of the capital is home to the Peking Opera Theater Company of Beijing, which was founded in 1979. Several late Peking Opera masters, including Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun and Ma Lianliang, prepared the way for the establishment of the theater.

"It feels like the 1980s. This place offers you a glimpse of what the city used to be like," says Chinese-American director Chen Shi-zheng, who is busy with rehearsals at the opera company based in Beijing's Fengtai district. He is preparing his two stage productions - Farewell My Concubine and The Orphan of Zhao - that will open the upcoming Beijing Music Festival in their joint Asia premieres. Now in its 21st year, the Beijing Music Festival, which is being held from Oct 12 to 26, will present 21 performances which will include operas, orchestral symphonies and works of chamber music.