An original Chinese opera which has been touring the country for a year is to undertake a 13-day tour of Italy.
Rickshaw Boy, or Camel Xiangzi, will be staged at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and Teatro Comunale in Florence between Sep 23 and Oct 5.
"Rickshaw Boy has been well received since its debut in Beijing," said Deng Yijiang, associate director of China's National Grand Theatre. The opera is very Chinese and reveals a lot about the old Beijing, he added.
Deng said Rickshaw Boy was chosen from eight original operas produced by China's National Grand Theatre in the past seven years, not only because it characterizes Chinese culture and the standard of the country's contemporary musicals but also because it is likely to strike a chord with western audiences.
"Rickshaw Boy is a very good illustration of grassroots Chinese people in the 1930s, their lives have been portrayed vividly in the novel," said Yi Liming, director of the opera. Yi said that in order to make it adapt better to western audiences, he rearranged the original in terms of staging and content.
The opera will also be broadcast live on RAI - Italy's national public broadcasting company – at 7:30pm on Sep 23. It will be the first time an overseas original opera has been broadcast on the station.
From a novel by Chinese author Lao She (1899-1966), Rickshaw Boy talks about the life of a fictional Beijing rickshaw man and is considered a classic of 20th-century Chinese literature. The book was translated into Italian by sinologist Stefania Stafutti.
