Chinese Block Opera Troupe’s New York Trip

Chinese officials on Wednesday blocked a Shanghai opera troupe from traveling to the U.S. to perform a 22-hour Chinese opera billed as the centerpiece of this year’s Lincoln Center summer festival.

Lincoln Center officials had hoped the Chinese would relent and allow the “The Peony Pavilion” to come here in time to be performed as scheduled at Lincoln Center Festival 98.

But the Shanghai Bureau of Culture insisted Wednesday that the production be uncrated and the actor-singers rehearse the entire opera so Chinese officials can determine what revisions should be made in an opera deemed “feudal, superstitious and pornographic” by the official Chinese press.

The news is a blow to the Lincoln Center, which spent about $500,000 getting the 400-year-old epic opera ready to be performed twice, with each performance broken up into six sections.

Six tons of elaborate sets, props and costumes were blocked from being shipped from Shanghai Airport last week. Nigel Redden, newly named head of the festival, and director Chen Shi-Zheng, who has been rehearsing members of the Shanghai Kunju Opera Company for nearly two years, went to China last weekend to try to resolve the differences.