American Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake will be performed at Shanghai Grand Opera House on Nov 13-15, as the closing production of the China Shanghai International Arts Festival. CHINA DAILY

The China Shanghai International Arts Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Organizers recently announced the festival's lineup of performing arts productions, running from Oct 17 to Nov 15.

Li Ming, president of the Center for the CSIAF, revealed at a conference on Aug 21 that the festival will present nearly 400 performances and exhibitions with around 1,100 events staged across the city.

The main events consist of 60 productions across 168 shows.

Almost 90 percent of the productions will be making their Shanghai debut at the festival, and 13 productions will be staged exclusively in Shanghai, their only stop in China.

These figures are not only a "vote of confidence" from world-renowned artists and troupes for Shanghai, but also a vivid testament to the accumulation of years of festival curation, Li says.

The festival will coincide with the official opening of the Shanghai Grand Opera House. The opening concert, Shanghai Grand Opera and Friends, and the closing performance, the American Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake, will both be staged at the new cultural landmark.

Each year, the CSIAF hosts international dialogue for performing arts professionals. This year's event will bring together leaders from top opera houses at home and abroad, including the Vienna State Opera in Austria and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. This opera summit will underscore Shanghai's significance on the global opera map, Li says.

Subsequently, three major operas — the Berlin State Opera's Der Rosenkavalier, the Mariinsky Theatre's Aida, and the Teatro La Fenice's Tosca — will be presented along with two complete-cycle projects — the Shostakovich Symphonies Cycle by the Mariinsky Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Valery Gergiev, and the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos Cycle, featuring pianist Rudolf Buchbinder and Staatskapelle Berlin, one of the world's leading orchestras.

Renowned composer-conductor Tan Dun talks about the outdoor concert featuring his composition Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women during the upcoming CSIAF. CHINA DAILY

The "Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels" series will bring 15 modern dance works, and two avant-garde plays by theater master Robert Wilson, Dorian and Moby Dick, will also take the stage during the CSIAF.

Four renowned pianists — Martha Argerich of Argentina, Vikingur Olafsson of Iceland, and Chinese pianists Yuja Wang and Lang Lang — will all perform at the CSIAF this year. "I believe such a star-studded lineup is probably what Shanghai audiences are most looking forward to," says Yang Jialu, vice-president of the Center for CSIAF.

Domestic performances are also diverse and compelling, Yang says. Performing groups around the country "see the city as a testing ground, where Shanghai audiences will evaluate their new creations at the arts festival", she says. The festival will also showcase nine productions by Shanghai-based performing art groups.

Tan Dun, an internationally renowned composer and conductor, will give a special performance of his composition Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women at this year's CSIAF.

He will conduct the China National Symphony Orchestra, collaborate with harpist Xavier de Maistre, and present the 42-minute multimedia symphony at an outdoor concert on the Shanghai Exhibition Center Square on Oct 27. "Twenty years ago, I created the composition on commission from the China Shanghai International Arts Festival," Tan says. Since then, the composition has toured more than 50 countries. "Without the Shanghai arts festival, I would not have had the opportunity to explore the origin of Chinese women's culture, which extends back millennia.

"I am grateful to bring Nu Shu back home to Shanghai 20 years later, and perform an entrance-free concert for the public." The annual CSIAF is greatly significant to the city. The festival has brought boundless energy and nurtured Shanghai's cosmopolitan culture, he says.