On Thursday, March 12, 2020, in collaboration with Cinnabar Theater, Petaluma, and Dartmouth College, OM will present the first-ever performance of scenes from the opera-in-progress, Hutong, by award-winning Chinese-American composer, Kui Dong. This event will be free to the public.
Hutong—the series of courtyards and alleyways of traditional Chinese urban living that are currently undergoing siege to make way for new construction—is a comic opera in fifteen parts about the way in which a ruthless quest for high-rise modernization has destroyed many of these diverse communities located in the heart of Beijing. The object of the opera is to investigate the ways in which human relations are determined by such architectural structures and to explore a set of personal destinies in the face of social, cultural and technological changes. The opera is peopled by a surreal array of characters: a blind Norwegian sailor, a violin-wielding detective, assorted international architects, some children, and a frog, all presided over by the Fenghuang (or phoenix).