Flushing Town Hall Presents Stories of Kunqu Opera in the US

On Saturday, December 12 at 8:00 PM, Flushing Town Hall will present a virtual event, Kunqu in America: Memories of Chung-ho Chang Frankel, illustrating how Kunqu opera, the oldest extant version of Chinese theater, took root in the United States by featuring memories of Ms. Chung-ho Chang, one of the most influential Kunqu practitioners throughout the country.

Hailed as “the last female literary talent from China’s Republic Era” after the passing of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Ms. Chung-ho Chang was born in Shanghai to a big and prestigious family in 1913. She became a well-known poet, calligrapher, and Kunqu opera singer, and was active in the arts and cultural scene along with her three sisters during the first part of the 20th century. She moved to the U.S. in 1949 with her husband, Hans Frankel, a sinologist who later taught at Yale University and who she met while studying at Peking University.

Ms. Chang planted the seed of Kunqu opera and nurtured the art community while she lived in California and Connecticut. As an amateur devotee of Kunqu, she held Kunqu gatherings in her home, bringing students, actors, musicians, and scholars together to practice Kunqu singing and movements. For decades, she traveled from university to university to promote and demonstrate the art form. In 2001, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) proclaimed Kunqu a masterpiece of “the oral and intangible heritage of humanity”. Today, there is a thriving Kunqu opera community throughout the United States.

The virtual event will feature anecdotes of Ms. Chang collected exclusively by the Kunqu Society from interviews with Ms. Chang’s family members, students, and friends, and will showcase several elaborate costumes and musical instruments that were handmade by her.

The bilingual program (in English and Mandarin) will be told through videos, pictures, and interviews and take place on Saturday, December 12 at 8:00 PM EST. Following the program, there will be a live Q&A featuring guests who appeared in the stories.

Audiences must RSVP in advance to receive a link to watch the event on Zoom or YouTube. To RSVP or to learn more about the program, visit http://www.flushingtownhall.org/kunqu.

Kunqu Society, based in Flushing, was founded in 1988, and is a non-profit corporation with the mission of studying, preserving, and promoting kunqu, an elegant form of traditional Chinese theatre, and is well-known for its exquisite fusing of poetry, music, and movement in performance to present stories and characters.