The British singer and song-writer Damon Albarn has written a new opera Monkey: Journey to the West, in mandarin, to be shown at the inaugurating Manchester International Festival. The opera is commissioned by the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng (陈士争).
The opera is based on a well known 16 century book Journey to the West (西游记), centering around the odyssey of the Monkey. Considered to be one of the four Chinese classical literature masterpieces, it has been adopted into various forms, including Chinese opera, movie and TV, many times, but not Western opera. British audiences have familiarised with the story from the 70s TV series of Japanese import. Damon Albarn and the set and costume designer Jamie Hewlett, were invited by the Chinese-American director Chen Shi-Zheng (Dark Matter) into the project. Before they started, they had traveled around China for three weeks to understand and learn the music.
Monkey: Journey to the West will open the Manchester International Festival on June 28.
