A Story Beyond Place and Time – Where Cultures Meet
An international operatic collaboration presented by the Beijing Music Festival and the KT Wong Foundation
The KT Wong Foundation is delighted to partner with the Beijing Music Festival once again to bring Handel’s magisterial Giulio Cesare to China.
We were the first to bring baroque opera here, over fifteen years ago, with Handel’s Semele, and we are pleased to be participating in this again with the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the leading orchestra in China. It also includes China’s only baroque ensemble, Shanghai Camerata.
This semi staged opera will be conducted by renowned British baroque conductor Lawrence Cummings and will include an international cast of early music talent from the UK, US, Europe and Iran.
Since its very first viewing to the present day, Giulio Cesare has entranced its audience. After all, love, grief, ambition, jealousy and the hunger for power are universal themes that belong to every culture and to every era.
And now, in a landmark production, this deeply human story is given new meaning, played out as a poetic meeting point between civilisations, a rhapsodically symbolic space of monumental structures, where ancient Egyptian and contemporary Chinese traditions co-exist on the Silk Road.
A Silk Road which already has its own replete literary and musical canon is recast in the audience’s imagination as an innovative metaphor, not only for trade and cultural exchange, but also for conquest, diplomacy, attention, conflict and transformation.
Along this enduring road travel new philosophies and aesthetics as well as powerful leaders and throughout this exquisitely meshed cross-cultural encounter and exchange, the opera’s central themes of transformation, vulnerability and leadership remain supreme.
EXPERIENCE GIULIO CESARE IN BEIJING
In this ground-breaking production, Giulio Cesare is no longer a reductive Western colonial fantasy but rather a timeless exploration of truth, love, power and cultural transformation.
Bringing together international musicians with their own profound baroque musical heritage, this setting point of East and West, past and present, myth and human reality, offers a culturally fluent and emotionally vivid experience for the Festival’s audience.
A work that has always been open to reinterpretation through contemporary staging has for the first time been connected with visual and physical languages that resonate with Chinese symbolic traditions, movement philosophies and historical aesthetics.
These do not replace the opera’s origins but unravel them further, allowing audiences to encounter the work through a familiar symbolic vocabulary while experiencing its emotional universality.
Lady Linda Wong Davies, Founder and Chairman, KT Wong Foundation
“Over 15 years ago, we were the first to unite Western baroque opera and Chinese stagecraft, when we brought Handel’s Semele to the Festival.
This was the beginning of a lasting cultural exchange that continues in our latest collaboration with the Beijing Music Festival.
I am delighted to be able to bring this magisterial production of Giulio Cesare to a new audience of opera lovers and in doing so promote the valuable cross-cultural dialogue that is the hallmark of our Foundation”
Maestro Long Yu, Founder and chairman of the Beijing Music Festival Artistic Committee said:
“It is a great pleasure and honour to partner with the KT Wong Foundation once more and premiere this extraordinary landmark production.
The audience will be struck by its revelatory staging and relevance for modern day China, celebrating the Asiatic region as a global crossroads for vibrant cultural exchange and shared traditions.
We are thrilled to present Giulio Cesare to a new audience of baroque opera lovers at the 29th Beijing Music Festival”.