The Chinese premiere of the one-act opera La Voix Humaine is the most appealing event during the Sino-French artistic festival. 
 
Shanghai has been referred to as the Paris of the East ever since the early 1930s. "The artists and audience here show a kinship to operas, dramas, films and novels," says Wu Xiaolu, a young Shanghai art critic who is enjoying a flourish of French this week.

The Sino-French artistic festival began Wednesday and aims to link Shanghai closer to French culture. This year's festival includes 22 different programs in music, theater, literature, painting, sculpture and film.

Shanghai was one of the first Chinese cities influenced by Western culture, and Paris was a leading light for the China's city by the sea.

Zhang Hong, professor in the institute of Cultural Criticism At Tongji University said Paris is a great city and Shanghai, in its current stage, is a big city. "Shanghai has a lot to learn from Paris," he said.

Wu, art critic, said the artistic relationship between China and France had deepened thanks to more than 200 cultural exchanges since the start of the Sino-French Year. Many such events had come to Shanghai.

Claude Hudelot, the cultural consul of French consulate-general in Shanghai, said the festival was an opportunity for new artistic works to be born. Wu noted the Chinese premiere of the one-act opera La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), an operatic version of Jean Cocteau's famed drama, was the most appealing event on the program. "The work not only reflects the mentality of a French woman in the 1930s when it was first staged in Paris in 1959, but it reveals the inner world of many Chinese women especially those living in Shanghai today."

Li Wei, the opera's director, said Cocteau wrote La Voix Humaine in 1930 however the operatic version wasn't staged until 1959 after Cocteau collaborated with his good friend and renowned composer Francis Poulenc. "It is a 50-minute opera performed merely by one actress accompanied only with a piano, but it is very intriguing," Li said.

(China Daily April 19, 2008)