012 | Aesthetics in Opera III (2022)

The future of opera is in East Asia!

The boundaries between East and West have long been blurred. In the world of music, we're seeing the rise of East Asia. One genre that is particularly noteworthy is opera, which has always been dominated by Italian and German works, but this has changed recently. New operas in local languages are being created all over the world, and East Asia is at the center of it all.

In response to this phenomenon, this book departs from the traditional focus on Verdi or Wagner and presents eight representative operas from Korea, China, and Japan. These three countries have received strong musical influences from the West, but they have reproduced and reorganized them by blending them with their own musical traditions.

Lee Young-jo's Cheo-yong, based on a traditional Korean tale, Oh Ye-seung's The Death of General Kim, based on a short story by Tolstoy, Choi Woo-jung's 1945, which deals with the turbulent period after liberation, Na Sil-in's Black Recorder, which addresses the issue of aging in contemporary Korean society, and Park Chang-min's Babijangjeon, which shows the transformation of pansori into opera, represent “contemporary Korea” through opera.

Tandun's The First Emperor, about Emperor Qin Shi Huang's longing for the unification of China, Dan Ikuma's Yuzuru, based on a Japanese folk tale, and Toshio Hosokawa's The Tranquil Sea, about the protagonist who reads to his son after an earthquake and tsunami, will be presented to illustrate the themes that China and Japan are currently focusing on.