Photos: San Francisco Opera’s THE MONKEY KING

The world premiere of San Francisco Opera's The Monkey King by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang is running November 14-30 at the War Memorial Opera House.

One of the most highly anticipated new works of the opera season, this new action-hero opera centers around the mythical Monkey King (Sun Wukong), a perennial favorite in Chinese culture for more than four hundred years, whose popularity has exploded through film, television, animation and, most recently, the 2024 blockbuster video game Black Myth: Wukong, which sold 18 million copies in its first two months.

Commissioned by San Francisco Opera in partnership with the Chinese Heritage Foundation of Minnesota, The Monkey King is based on the opening episodes of Journey to the West, the Ming Dynasty novel attributed to Wu Cheng’en and considered one of China’s four greatest literary classics. This new adaptation for the opera stage, performed in English and Mandarin and uniting the disciplines of opera, dance and puppetry, follows the ambitious young monkey who is born from a stone and challenges the gods of the seas and heavens in a bid for immortality. 

Performed in English and Mandarin with English and Chinese supertitles, the eight performances of The Monkey King are scheduled for November 14 (7:30 p.m.), 16 (2 p.m.), 18 (7:30 p.m.), 20 (7:30 p.m.), 22 (7:30 p.m.), 25 (7:30 p.m.), 28 (7:30 p.m.), and 30 (2 p.m.), 2025.

Check out production photos here!

Photo credit: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

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