Beijing Opera

Beijing Opera, a major Chinese theatrical form, enjoys great popularity both at home and abroad. To many foreign theatergoers, it is almost synonymous with China's classical theatre. Beijing Opera is, indeed, the most representative of all Chinese traditional dramatic art forms. Peking opera of China is a national treasure with a history of 200 years. In the 55th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1790), the four big Huiban opera Troupes entered the capital and combined with Kunqu opera, Yiyang opera, Hanju opera and Luantan in

Beijing's theatrical circle of the time. Through a period of more than half a century of combination and integration of various kinds of opera there evolved the present Peking opera, the biggest kind of opera in China, whose richness of repertoire, great number of artists of performance and of audiences, and profound influence are incomparable in China.