2016 NCPA Opera Festival is to open on April 6 with Wagner's Tannhauser

Opera Tannhauser is based on Heinrich Heine's poem and medieval German legends

Wagner wrote 14 operas in his lifetime. From Der Fliegende Hollander to Parsifal, these ten operas represent musically a continuing development of the composer's style. And in his mid stage output, Tannhauser was one of his three "romantic operas" reinforced his reputation and the other two were Der Fliegende Hollander and Lohengrin. Musically, the Tannhauser Overture is frequently performed as a separate item in orchestral concerts. It depicts the storyline musically and reveals redemption through love, a theme running through the opera. There are many beautiful choruses and arias in the opera among which Pilgrim's Chorus embodies the noble aspirations of the penitents and the aria Evening Star celebrates love and loyalty.

Renowned European director Pier' Alli

2016 NCPA Opera Festival is to open on April 6 with Wagner's Tannhauser, which is the third Wagner opera presented by NCPA following Der Fliegende Hollander and Lohengrin. European opera director Pier'Alli serving as the director and the stage designer will lead the team that produced Norma for NCPA to create elaborate stage design for this production. Reputed for the original and farsighted creation concepts, he uses lots of symbolic elements in stage design and character portrayal, perfectly presenting the theme of redemption in Tannhauser. The opera is conducted by Lu Jia, the opera director of NCPA and the principal conductor of the China NCPA Orchestra. He will work with well-known Wagner singers, such as Endrik Wottrich, Manfred Hemm and Markus Werba, and renowned Chinese opera singers Warren Mok, Sun Xiuwei, Yuan Chenye, et al to bring the Chinese audience a thrilling artistic enjoyment.

The director will approach the opera's theme of redemption through love with highly symbolic ways

The 2016 NCPA Opera Festival is a 103-day opera extravaganza that features Chinese operas like The Long March, Fang Zhimin, Yue Fei and Western opera classics including La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, Rusalka and so on.