June 20, 2013. MacMillan Theatre, Toronto.

The chamber-opera Feng Yi Ting is a high-grade hybrid. The composer/librettist is Chinese, the director is Armenian-Canadian, and both are outstanding in their fields. Guo Wenjing belongs to the elite 200 students admitted to Beijing’s Central Conservatory in 1978 when it reopened after the Cultural Revolution. Feng Yi Ting is scored for Western winds and strings as well as a core group of Chinese instruments. The director is Atom Egoyan, renowned as a film-maker (Exotica, 1994), Egoyan’s stunning production of Richard Strauss’ opera Salome (1996), like Feng Yi Ting, focuses on the theme of fatal attraction. READ FULL REVIEW HERE.