Haverford Professor Shizhe Huang compared the works of Tang with those of William Shakespeare. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of author of The Peony Pavilion, the Ming Dynasty era playwright Tang Xianzu. The first piece that Jia performed was from The Peony Pavilion. Also, I didn’t want to lose something in my education.” She joked that many of the schools in which Chinese opera is studied, “are like the army” in the intensity of their practice. Firstly, because I had been a dancer when I was young, so that was my main focus.

She explained, “I didn’t start learning until I was 17. Jia herself was a latecomer to the art form.

Chinese opera, she said, soon becomes their main focus.

Jia also detailed the intensity of training for young performers of Chinese opera. Different character types not only differ vocally, but they each have a specific way of moving on stage. Jia explained that specific types of characters are assigned to performers at a young age. “I am always interested in spreading the art of Beijing opera.” Jia said, “I was so thrilled to be able to talk about this art from today.”ĭuring Jia’s talk, she gave examples of the four main characters in Beijing opera: sheng (male characters), dan (female characters), jing (male characters with painted faces) and chou (clown-like characters). Jia currently lives in New Jersey and continues to perform as well as educate people about Chinese culture and art. From 1999 to 2003, Jia toured with the production around the world, visiting multiple countries including Australia, Italy, Singapore, Australia and Denmark, to name a few. Jia arrived in the United States from China in 1999 as part of New York’s Lincoln Center Festival’s production of The Peony Pavilion. Jia performed portions of both The Peony Pavilion and The Drunken Beauty Yang after a brief talk on the numerous styles of Chinese opera and the years of practice necessary to perfect their performance.

Kun and Beijing Opera singer Yonghong Jia visited Haverford’s campus on Wednesday to sing two short opera pieces and discuss the history and performance of Chinese operas.

Yang yang opera singer