My Thoughts and a Declaration  —  Fan Jingma         2011

Twenty-three years have passed since I first went to Italy in 1988 to pursue my Bel Canto study and eventually became a professional opera singer. During those two decades, as an Oriental opera singer performing the Western operas on Western stages, I traveled almost the entire world. During this period of time and all the places I went, I saw that the Western vocal music (not speaking of the symphony and the other instrumental works here), from Mozart, Beethoven, to Schumann, Schubert, Mahler, to the French Fauré, Berlioz, and the Russian Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and of course, all those Italian Bel Canto art songs and folk songs, were sung around the world and appreciated by each culture, and naturally became a part of it; but our Chinese music, on the other hand, was only enjoyed within China and by ourselves. Why so? This question has been bothering me and has occupied the most of my thoughts. Continue reading →