This October, Scottish Opera will be joined by a group of students and teachers from the Fangcaodi School, Beijing. They will be hosted by Jordanhill School in Glasgow and the schools will together learn and perform the opera for children Warriors! The Emperor’s Incredible Army. This show, based on the story of the terracotta warriors of Xian, has been performed around Scotland as part of our Primary School Tour as well as across nine schools in Beijing.
In 2018, we became the first opera company in the world to be granted Confucius Specialist Hub status by the Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools (CISS) and the Han Ban Council. Scotland’s schools hold over 150 ‘Confucius Classrooms’, and alongside The Royal Zoological Society Edinburgh, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Scottish Junior Football Association we are one of the first non-school organisations to be recognised by the Han Ban Council.
Our work involves bringing Chinese language and culture into Scottish schools, as well as teaming up with schools and/or cultural organisations in China. As well as Warriors!, we have created a second opera based on Chinese history, The Dragon of the Western Seas, which tells the story of Kunming’s most famous citizen, Admiral Zheng He. Three singers from Scottish Opera and around 200 pupils from the Kunming Fangcaodi International School will present the first performance ever given in China of this show on the 1 November 2019.