My First Opera: Huang Ruo
I was born and raised in China in a village on Hainan Island. In every village of our size, there was a communal open-air space in front of the village temple where kids would play and run around, and people would bring their clothes or rice crop to dry during the day. At night, sometimes Chinese opera troupes would travel from village to village to perform in those communal outdoor spaces, so my first opera experience was going to see village opera with my grandmother when I was eight or nine years old.
This article was published in the Summer 2022 issue of Opera America Magazine.
