JIANG QIHU, “Poetry” 江其虎
Peking Opera Tenor
Born in 1963 in Jiangsu Province, Jiang Qihu is a principal soloist of the famed China National Peking Opera Company and regarded as a leading artist on the national level in China.
Disciple of the Ye School, he graduated from the top class at the China Academy of Drama under the tutelage of the renowned Peking opera singer and pedagogue Ye Shaolan. Jiang is most noted as a versatile actor with specializations in both the “scholarly” and the “militaristic” characters, with a voice that is not only full-bodied and wide-ranging, but also immensely agile. This has established him as a leading interpreter of romantic and heroic roles in the classical Peking opera repertoire.
Winners of numerous national prizes and competitions, Jiang received the coveted “Mei Lan Fang” Golden Award in 1993 and the National Leading Young Artists in 2000 awarded by the Ministry of Culture, amongst many others. He is honored by the Ministry of Culture as an “Outstanding Artist of the People’s Republic of China”. Television documentaries have also been made in China of his life and art.
Jiang has brought the art of Peking opera to the international stage, and enabled it to cross traditional boundaries and cultural barriers in the world of performing arts. The revival of the classic Zhang Xie Zhuang Yuan (Zhang Xie the Scholar) from the Southern Song dynasty, directed by the nation’s leading stage director Lin Zhaohua, in which Jiang played the title role, has been lauded as a true breakthrough in China. His work in Zhang Xie Zhuang Yuan has garnered many media and critics’ accolades in the arts festivals of Finland, the Baltic Sea, Copenhagen and China. Such was the public and critical success it enjoyed that after a creative revision the production returned to Finland Arts Festival a second time. Jiang is also a frequent collaborator with the prominent theatre direction in Beijing, Li Liuyi. Together they collaborated in Guo Wenjing’s new Peking opera Hua Mulan, which premiered at the Beijing Capital Theatre in 2004.
Apart from performing leading roles in popular traditional repertoire such as Bai She Zhuan (Legend of the White Snake) and Yu Tang Chun (Jade Pavilion), Jiang also participated in an experimental play based on stories by Lu Xun, a major figure in contemporary Chinese literature. He also performed a leading role in Guo Wenjing’s opera, Night Banquet, which was presented at such prestigious festivals as the Paris Autumn Festival, Perth International Arts Festival, Lincoln Center Festival, Berlin Festival, and Beijing Music Festival between 2001 and 2003. He also played in Singapore director Ong Keng Sen’s King Lear, which has toured six countries. Most recently he appeared as the role of “Poetry” in Poet Li Bai, a new opera by Guo Wenjing which premiered in Central City in Colorado, and subsequently debuted in Shanghai, Beijing, Rome and Hong Kong.
Jiang made his international concert debut on the popular Zaterdagmatinee series at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, in the world premiere of Guo Wenjing’s Fengyiting (Phoenix Pavilion) in March 2004, which was broadcast live on Dutch radio. He later reprised the role at the Cologne Philharmonie, on the occasion of the Cologne Triennale.