Shanghai Opera House's third session of a serial concert entitled The Four Seasons falls on the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Opera House will take advantage of the festival and design a programme of Chinese music on the theme of the moon.
The concert will start with a choral piece "The Half Moon Rising". The orchestra introduces the melody and then, as the music fades, singers with colourful costumes ascend the stage to perform the chorus without accompaniment.
Following the chorus will be the formal overture of the concert, an orchestral adaptation from Chinese folk music called Caiyuan Zhuiyue, "Colourful Clouds Chasing the Moon".
The major part of the concert will consist of Chinese songs, performed by leading singers in the Opera House, such as Wei Song, Huang Leilei, and special guest soprano Yu Lihong.
Contemporary pieces will be interspersed with the traditional folk songs of minority ethnic groups.
The second half of the concert takes a completely different tone, based upon a series of songs on the theme of the Long March, telling heroic stories about the Red Army in the Chinese Civil War during the 1930s.
All the singers, even the conductor, will be dressed in a costume much similar to the uniform of the Red Army, wearing sandals made from grass and leg wrappings.
The Shanghai Opera House performed the "Long March" series on August 1 last year. This year, however, there was some dispute over the intellectual property rights to the works, and the issue was settled until a few weeks before the concert was due to be performed.
7:15pm, September 21-22
Shanghai Grand Theatre
