Chinese musical ready for grand presentation at Beijing festival

Baritone Shen Yang (left) rehearses for the musical The Fugitive as part of the ongoing Beijing Music Festival. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Suitcases, snow, a red sofa, wooden stairs and a raven come together in The Fugitive, a multimedia musical production. This is a world where the late Austrian composer Franz Schubert's famous piece Winter Journey－about a poet pining for his lost love in the cold and gradually dying－mixes with images based on German poet Wilhelm Mueller's words.

As part of the ongoing Beijing Music Festival, which was launched in 1998 as a major celebration of classical music, the show will be staged on Friday at an art house in the city.

"It has inspired artists of different generations and from different fields to create, to celebrate its legacy. That's why we want to interpret Winter Journey in our own production," says the director Zou Shuang, who developed the idea of The Fugitive over a cup of coffee with Chinese baritone Shen Yang.

As they talked about the production, they realized that the central role of the man, who mourns for his lost love, connects with them, Zou says.