Building a Cultural Bridge to China through Opera

Virginia Opera conductor looks to International Opera Alliance to open doors and provide opportunities.

(PRWEB) November 18, 2005 -- Peter Mark, the artistic director of Virginia Opera, says he got the idea for starting a new international opera organization to help introduce Chinese singers to Western opera, after a series of master classes he was invited to give in Shanghai in the summer of 2004. "I realized that there were voices, major voices in the world that don't have access to what American singers have acess to, which is highly professional language coaches, musical coaches, experienced conductors and young artist programs."

In addition to being invited back to conduct the first Italian language production of Tosca in Shanghai in 2005, he was also given the honor of conducting Tosca at the grand opening of the brand new Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai last July, a complex similar to D.C.'s Kennedy Center.

Convinced that a cultural exchange could be established, Mark sought out investors and friends in academia to get behind his efforts. In 2005 the International Opera Alliance, received the suport of George Mason University, and now IOA is planning on regular trips to China to develop talent and, according to Mark, open doors in the West for talented Chinese singers who he is certain can rise to the top of the international opera elite.

And the exchange works both ways, he says. Argentinean-born soprano Fabiana Bravo sang Tosca in Shanghai and can now claim as one of her achievements, that she opened the Center, too, to critical aclaim. Shanghai Opera Magazine, China's most authoritative magazine on the art of opera" said of her performance she was "the brightest star in the opening night Tosca production".

More on this story and the newly formed International Opera Aliance can be found in the December issue of the Internet's hottest opera magazine, "OperaOnline.us".

As with most of the articles featured on OperaOnline.us, the magazine's founder, Paul Joseph Walkowski' said that "it was a chance e-mail from a reader, in this case an enthused condutor, Peter Mark, that piqued my interest and resulted in us running with the article for our December issue. "I guess you could call it another world exclusive."

"Peter and the IOA have laid before themselves an ambitious undertaking," Wakowski says, "but from every indication the IOA looks like it can serve an unmet need and in marketing, that's the first step to success. I suspect we'll be reading more about this organization in the near future now that Peter has been invited back to Shanghai in 2006 to conduct, Carmen."

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