Chinese team gives Marco Polo the opera treatment

GUANGZHOU/ROME - The story of the young Venetian merchant and explorer Marco Polo is to be retold as the Carlo Felice Theater has signed a memorandum of understanding on original opera Marco Polo with its Chinese producer to have the opera open the theater's 2019-2020 season.

The opera produced by the China Arts and Entertainment Group, which made its debut at the Guangzhou Opera House in 2018, has a German composer, a Danish stage director and is performed in Chinese by international singers.

CFT's art director Giuseppe Acquaviva, who says the opera is "important in many ways", also calls it the fruit of the cultural exchanges between Europe and China, two ends of the ancient Silk Road.