CRI听力:George Benjamin's 'Written on Skin' premieres in China

Written on Skin, an opera based on a 12th-century legend from the south of France had its Chinese premiere at the Poly Theatre in Beijing last night.

Ben Davies is the director and says upon bringing the opera to China, they decided to try something called 'semi-staging.'

"The approach to semi-staging is to distill all of the work and our experience of a big production into the psychological detail of the characters in the opera and the relationships between the text and the musical dialogue which everyone can see on stage in a different relationship. So everyone can see the orchestra and all the detail of the orchestration as well as the characterization of the singers. So we invite the audience to imagine the rest."

The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra provided the music.

The opera, with themes of love, passion and violence, premiered in 2012. It has been performed worldwide.