Aug 30, 2013, was just a regular weekend day in Xiamen in eastern China's Fujian province. But for Huang Anlun, a veteran Chinese composer, it carried more meaning.
That evening, under the baton of Zheng Xiaoying, China's first female conductor, who was 84 then, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra debuted the Chinese opera Yue Fei at the concert hall of Xiamen University. It was an opera that Huang had started writing when he was 22, and he had waited for 35 years to have it finally played in public.
"When it really happened, I couldn't even believe it," recalls Huang, 66, who is now in Beijing preparing for Yue Fei.
Music from the opera will be staged in Tianjin on Thursday and Saturday, and full-scale performances will be staged at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts in September.
Born in Guangdong province in South China, Huang moved to Tianjin at 3 with his musician parents. He graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and has been a prolific composer.
Huang has created more than 40 symphonic works for operas, chamber music presentations, ballets, theatrical dramas and movies.
More than 20 of his works have been chosen for the collections of "National Musical 100 Years", the country's official music publishing project.
But Huang says: "Yue Fei completed me as a composer."
He attributed the opera to conductor Zheng, who was his co-worker at China National Opera House in 1977. The opera marked the beginning of a mentor-pupil relationship between the two.
In 1978, two years after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) ended, Zheng discussed with Huang the idea of writing a Chinese opera based on the story of Yue Fei (1103-42), a legendary general of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
For Huang, who was 29 that year, it was a quite a challenge. He had composed a few works but he had never written a full operatic work on a big theme.
With the help of Zheng, he, along with the late scriptwriter Xu Qingdong, did lots of research on Yue and listened to many Western operatic works.
According to Huang, Chinese-language, Western-style opera should be rooted in Chinese culture. Early operatic works, such as The White-Haired Girl and Liu Hulan, contained traditional Chinese folk music elements and singing style, he says.
Huang and Zheng focused on the last two years of Yue's life, when he not only fought against invaders but was also disappointed by the corruption among his own government officials. Finally, he was killed by people who betrayed his trust.
The score and script had been revised several times and it wasn't finished until Huang received his master's degree in music from Yale University in 1986.
"Yue Fei contains all the key elements of an opera－dramatic plot, grand symphonic tunes and vocal production," Zheng says. "It's a timeless work."
If you go
7 pm, Thursday. Concert hall of Tianjin Conservatory Of Music, 57 Shiyijing Lu (Road), Hedong district, Tianjin. 022-2416-0076.
7 pm, Saturday. Tian Jiabing concert hall of Nankai University, 92 Weijing Lu (Road), Nankai district, Tianjin. 022-2350-1326.
