Discount art festival tickets going fast

Residents purchased about half of the 15,000 discounted tickets available for the 14th China Shanghai International Arts Festival Tuesday, according to the festival organizer.

Tickets will remain on sale at a discount through Wednesday at 33 locations across the city, including major theaters, concert halls and some community centers, said Zha Guowei, who is in charge of the box office for the festival.

"More than 70 percent of 9,000 discounted tickets we set aside (Tuesday) were sold by the afternoon," Zha told the Global Times.

The discounted tickets were sold at 50 percent to 60 percent off the original price, which ranges from 50 yuan ($8.00) to 280 yuan per ticket.

If some of the discounted tickets remain unsold after Wednesday, the festival organizer will put them on sale again on October 24.

The local government is sponsoring the sale. It bought about 10 million yuan worth of festival tickets to resell at a discount.

The tickets account for about 15 percent of the 46 shows of the festival, which runs from October 18 to November 20, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News.

Zha said the tickets for operas, classical music concerts and dances are almost all sold out.

"People with medium or low incomes buy the tickets for themselves or for friends and relatives to experience modern venues that they otherwise rarely have the opportunity to see, such as Shanghai Grand Theater and Shanghai Concert Hall."

This year's festival includes performances of the classical opera La Bohème, produced by Shanghai Grand Theater and organizing body of the Salzburg International Art and Music Festival and La Traviata by the Stuttgart Ballet, according to a press release from the festival's organizer.