Shanghai International Arts Festival closes after 40-day run

The 24th China Shanghai International Arts Festival closed on Nov 27 with a concert by Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the baton of British conductor Daniel Harding.

The concert featured pianist Beatrice Rana and presented a program of classics by Verdi, Ravel and Rachmaninoff.

This year the festival open on Oct 17 and continued for more than a month. About 20,000 artists from all over the world presented a combined 1400 performances and exhibitions, attracting a total of 14.44 million online and offline participants. The overall satisfaction rate for the festival reached 97.3 percent.

The main performance section, consisting of 55 stage productions, achieved a total box office revenue of about 66 million yuan. About 32 percent of the audience came from other provinces and cities. A significant portion of these non-local audiences "came to Shanghai especially for the festival, and each would spend in average 4.6 days in the city," according to Li Ming, president of the CSIAF center.

An integral part of the arts festival, the CSIAF Performing Arts Fair took place at the Bocom New Bund 31 Performing Arts Center from Oct 18 to 21. It was attended by 500 performing arts institutions and approximately 2,000 industry representatives. Approximately 600 letters of intent for cooperation were reached over the four-day event.

This year's festival also saw the 5th Annual Conference of the Network of Silk Road Arts Festival. Since its founding in 2017, the network has had 196 member institutions, covering 52 countries and regions.