Hitting the right note

The other Western singers, including Damian Thantrey as Maffeo Polo and Jonathan Gunthorpe as Niccolo Polo, also learned to sing in Chinese from scratch.

According to Li Jinsheng, president of the China Arts and Entertainment Group, the opera took about three years to put together a team of international artists. Among them are London-based video designer Luke Halls, who was a member of the creative team behind the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, and London-based set and costume designer Emma Ryott, who designed more than 1,800 costumes and accessories for this opera.

Munich-based composer Enjott Schneider spent 10 weeks finishing the three-hour opera, which would have normally taken two years to complete.

From August to October, he worked day and night on the libretto written by Wei Jin, one of the most influential poets in contemporary Chinese literature.

Since Schneider doesn't speak Chinese, a Chinese friend of his wrote out the words in pinyin and added the German translation under each line of the libretto.

"The sounds of each Chinese word is very different from Italian, one of the most common languages in opera productions. It was a big challenge for me to compose using the Chinese language," says Schneider, who is the chairman of the board of the German collecting society and performance rights organization, Gema.

The composer, who has a wide range of repertories for film, television, chamber works, orchestral music and operas, started researching Chinese music in the 1990s, which enabled him to combine traditional Chinese folk sounds with Mongolian music and Western classical music.

In the opera, audiences can hear the distinctive sounds of Chinese musical instruments, including the erhu, yangqin (a Chinese dulcimer) and bamboo flute, combined with khoomei (traditional Mongolian throat-singing) - all set against the backdrop of symphony orchestra.

"My interest in Chinese music started with the traditional Chinese philosophies, such as Taoism," says the composer.

Along with his Chinese musician friends - sheng player Wu Wei and erhu player Yan Jiemin - Schneider composed the concerto for sheng and orchestra and symphony No. 3 for alto and sheng.