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By Jocy Su
Campus Reporter
More than 400 people, including more than 200 children, from the communities flooded the auditorium and enjoyed the German opera Hansel und Gretel today, only in Chinese.
Graduate Institute of Performing Arts first-year student Wu Eei-chun (吳枚樽) said that the show was performed by GIPA, and, for increasing communication and bounding with local communities, this show was opened to the public with free admissions, especially to children.
Although the opera was performed in German, GIPA students revised parts of the script of the opera by adding some Chinese lyrics so the story itself would interest more young children at the scene. Meanwhile, a big screen with Chinese subtitles was also set up for better understanding of the lyrics while a voice-over was also helping explaining the entire story.
"Since the majority of the audiences are kids, we have to make this show easy to be understood,” said GIPA Professor Hong Pei-chi (洪珮綺).
A total of 14 elementary school children from Gu Ting Elementary School (古亭國小) were also invited to the cast, as they sang the chorus and performed angels and captivated children by the witch in the play.
This show was first promoted on April 10, when GIPA students took advantage of the Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) statue at the main entrance of the main campus, decorated it with a big pair of fancy shades and a shopping bag in the statue’s hand as GIPA students organized a promotion activity for the show.
As Hansel und Gretel means “candy house” in Mandarin, students decided to take advantage of the statue for their promotion activities, which made front page newspaper stories as well.
The pronunciation of “candy” happened to be the same as “hall,” as CKS Memorial Hall was also a hot political issue because it was re-named as Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.
At the statue, students established a huge promotion construction and decorated it as the CKS Memorial Hall. Under the concept of assonance, students replaced the name “memorial hall” with “remember candy,” now that the Chinese title for the focus of the promotion – Hansel und Gretel – is "candy house.”
GIPA said that the show was sponsored by Kuo Yuan Ye Foods Co (郭元益) and Nine Suns bakery (九個太陽) of Taichung. Next show was scheduled for 2:30pm on May 17.
