The 8th Guangzhou Art Festival was launched at the Guangzhou Opera House on May 2. Officials in charge of Guangzhou cultural publicity and leaders of cultural groups and the opera house attended the opening ceremony. They included Lu Zhiqiang, director general of the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Press; Zhu Xiaoyi, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee; Li Jin, vice-general manager of China Arts and Entertainment Group (CAEG); and He Ying, general manager of Guangzhou Opera House.

Lu Zhiqiang, director general of the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Press, delivers a speech.

Zhu Xiaoyi, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, delivers a speech. 

Li Jin, vice-general manager of China Arts and Entertainment Group, delivers a speech.

The launching ceremony of the 8th Guangzhou Art Festival

The opening ceremony

The festival, organized by the Publicity Department of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Press and China Arts and Entertainment Group, promotes exchange between Guangzhou local theatrical groups and their domestic and overseas counterparts to drive the development of local troupes and build Guangzhou into an “international drama city”.

Dance performance by the Xinghai Conservatory of Music 

The festival will last from May to August, and will stage 56 theatrical performances including opera, musical drama, dance drama, modern drama, puppetry, traditional drama and children’s plays. The festival will be unveiled with the original opera Marco Polo and its curtain will fall with the opera War and Peace.

The opera Marco Polo is directed by Kasper Holten, former opera director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Chinese conductor Tang Muhai will lead the Macao Orchestra in the opera’s score. The opera also invites Luke Halls, multimedia creative director of the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games; Bruno Poet, winner of the Oliver Award for Best Lighting Design; and Emma Ryott, winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Best Garment Design.

Tang said that although the performance is an opera, the story of Marco Polo is popular and full of fantasy and oriental flavor. “The most interesting point of the opera is cultural difference and exchange,” he added.

This festival will further promote the art and upgrading of Guangzhou’s cultural soft power. During the festival, the “Art salon” will hold more than 30 thematic activities to popularize artistic knowledge and raise citizens’ cultural quality.