Einführung in das KUNQU (English shop)

Die Klassische Chinesische Oper des 16.-19 Jahrhunderts

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In Europe and the USA, Chinese opera became popular above all through the acrobatics of the military Peking opera (Wuxi). Broad interest in it has declined over the past 10 years, because Kungfu films took up this aspect exclusively and thus better suited Western mass taste, since the military music (the gong-and-drum ensemble Luogu) was felt to be rather disturbing.

By contrast, Kunqu — in which civil (wen) pieces predominate and whose expressive, long-drawn (“water-polished”) melodies, delicately accompanied by the bamboo flute Dizi, string instruments and mouth organ, appeal spontaneously even to Western opera lovers (as the success of the 2004 guest performance in Weimar demonstrates) — is hardly known in Europe.(1)

In 2001, the classical Chinese Kunqu opera was declared a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO.

Kunqu [pronounced “Kuntschü”] means “melodies from the Kunshan” (Kun Mountains of Zhejiang Province), near the city of Yongjia.