August 14, 2026
Shanghai Opera House | 26/27 Season Opener On Sale, and the Four Chinese Numbers Are the Rare Part
September 5, 7.30pm, Shanghai Concert Hall main hall. Zhang Liang conducts, with Lei Jia, Huang Ying, Wang Hongwei and Shi Yijie leading. Tickets 80 to 680 yuan, on sale from 2pm on August 14. Fifteen numbers, nine European and four from Chinese national opera.
By 小魔女·Edited by 马勒迷
The Shanghai Opera House opens its 2026/27 season at 7.30pm on September 5 in the main hall of the Shanghai Concert Hall. Tickets are 80, 180, 280, 380, 480, 580 and 680 yuan, on sale from 2pm on August 14. Zhang Liang conducts the Shanghai Opera House Symphony Orchestra, with sopranos Lei Jia and Huang Ying and tenors Wang Hongwei and Shi Yijie leading. Shi is also the company's current president.
Fifteen numbers, nine European and four Chinese
The other two are orchestral. The quadrille Johann Strauss II drew out of Die Fledermaus opens the evening, and the Orphée aux enfers overture sits in the middle, ending in the can-can everybody can hum.
The nine European numbers are standard gala repertoire. Lehár bookends the programme with Das Land des Lächelns and Die lustige Witwe, and in between come Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Lucia di Lammermoor, the Flower Duet from Delibes's Lakmé, the tenor-baritone duet from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, "Quando m'en vo" from Puccini's La bohème, and the Rigoletto quartet. Any of these could turn up on any operatic gala anywhere; if you have heard them before, you will know what you are hearing.
The rare part is the other four. "Words of Love" from Red Poppies, "Looking Up at the Dark Night Sky" from The Knot of Hearts, and two numbers from Daughter of the Party held back to close the evening for Lei Jia. Complete recordings of these three Chinese operas are essentially impossible to find on any streaming service; The Knot of Hearts premiered in 1981 and is rarely staged. If anything on this bill needs you to be in the hall to hear it, it is these four and not the nine before them.
The young singers are not there to decorate the bill
Twelve more singers appear, drawn from the company's own roster and from the first cohort of its young-artist programme. What matters is the work they are given. Wu Liere, Jia Mengying, Wang Lian and Ren Ting sing the Rigoletto quartet between them, and the seven-man ensemble from Die lustige Witwe goes to Huang Junpeng, Li Xinyu, Tao Kuo, Pan Moyao, Zhang Aohan, Li Ang and Zhang Yangbo. A season-opening gala usually keeps the ensembles for the famous names and puts the newcomers in the chorus. This one does the opposite.
Two things worth stating plainly
First, the presenter's promotional copy mentions Carmen, and there is no Carmen number anywhere on the published programme. We list the programme, so Carmen does not appear on our page. The programme is subject to change on the night.
Second, this concert can only be bought inside WeChat. The route is the 阅读原文 link at the foot of the Shanghai Opera House's on-sale post, and that page does not load outside WeChat, so our page carries the channel rather than a link. The Shanghai Concert Hall's own ticketing system does not list this concert at all. It is a hall rental.