Chico in China: Opera Workshop to Perform at U.S. Embassy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 1999
Kathleen McPartland
530-898-4260
John Gibbens
(530) 898-6084
Chico in China: Opera Workshop to Perform at U.S. Embassy
California State University, Chico’s Opera Workshop will perform at the United States Embassy in Beijing during its upcoming trip to China from November 18 through the 26.
Director Ying Yeh arranged the visit as part of an itinerary which will take the workshop to music conservatories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Xi’an, and to the Beijing Language and Culture University.
Director Yeh, one of China’s most popular opera performers and James Bankhead, Chair of the Music Department, conceived of the trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Chico’s Opera Workshop.
Seventy-five faculty, staff, and friends of CSU, Chico will accompany the 22 members of the Opera Workshop, pianist Caren Levine, and Yeh on the tour which includes visits to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Jade Bhudda Temple.
Yeh said that the timing of this trip is especially significant as China and the United States enter the new millennium. “The two countries are extremely important to each other economically and culturally. We need to work closely together. The Chico State trip is like a mini-ambassadorial tour.”
CSU, Chico already has a strong connection to China: at least four professors were born in China; there is a new semester in Beijing program; and now Yeh is director of the Opera Workshop. The group will rendezvous with English professor Frank Li and 15 CSU, Chico students, who are in China for a semester at the Beijing Language and Culture University.
John Gibbens, development director for Humanities and Fine Arts, is in charge of all arrangements for the trip and will act as a tour guide. Gibbens, who has managed symphonies for several major cities, said making tour arrangements for symphonies was simple compared to making travel arrangements for 99 people in a foreign language to a destination as far away as China.
The large group includes members from Idaho, Texas, Ohio, and all parts of California, as well as Chico. It includes a cardiologist, a dentist and two nurses. “We have our own medical team,” quipped Gibbens.
Tiananmen Square for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
CSU, Chico’s Opera Workshop, founded in 1959 by Dr. James Kinnee, and then directed by Gwen Curatillo until her retirement in 1996, is unusual for both a town of Chico’s size and a music department of modest size.
Curatillo said of the 40 years of the workshop’s history, “The workshop is a tribute to the university and the community that has supported it. It has been a magnificent adventure for a town of this size. And the trip to China may be its greatest adventure!”
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