Published : 2025-04-03
On April 3, 1951, the Chinese National Academy of Opera (中國戲曲研究院) was established.
The Chinese National Academy of Opera was formed by merging and reorganising parts of the staff from the Opera Improvement Bureau's editing and research units, the New Opera Experimental Mobile Group, the Opera Experimental School, and the Beijing Opera Research Institute.
The first director of the institute was the famous modern Peking Opera master, Mei Lanfang (梅蘭芳).
In his speech at the founding conference, Mei Lanfang stated that the fundamental mission of The Chinese National Academy of Opera is to organise and revise the excellent scripts of traditional operas and to create new scripts and new lyrics to ensure the supply of performance programmes.
In addition, the institute would focus on research and experimental work in various aspects of opera art and use scientific methods to train a new generation of opera actors and operatic work cadres.
The academy also received inscriptions from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and Zhou Enlai (周恩來), which respectively read "Let a hundred flowers bloom, and weed out the old to bring forth the new" and "Value and transform, unite and educate, both are indispensable."
These two sayings became the guiding principles for the construction of the institute and for operatic work nationwide.
