Shanghai Grand Opera House opens with aspirations to become the city’s premier cultural institution

Shaped like a folding fan and rising beside the Huangpu River in Pudong, the Shanghai Grand Opera House opened on Oct 17 — a new landmark that aims to become a driving force in the city's cultural scene.

Since opening, the house has staged a run of productions from abroad. Teatro La Fenice brought its 2025 production of Toscaon Oct 22 and 24; Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra completed all 15 Shostakovich symphonies in eight concerts across six days from Oct 23 to 28, marking the composer's 120th birth year.

Gergiev has been taking late night walks around the building, dropping in on parts of Tosca at Harmony Hall — the largest of the house's three auditoriums, with 2,000 seats — and keeping a close eye on preparations for the Mariinsky Theatre's Aida, which runs at Harmony Hall from Oct 30 to Nov 1. Verdi's epic is a vast production — its props and scenery filled 20 standard shipping containers. Thanks to the generous backstage space and advanced stage engineering, crews were able to build Aida while Tosca was still on stage.

Both Tosca and Aida are making their Asian debuts here, part of SGOH's push to secure "Asian premieres and Shanghai-exclusive runs of outstanding productions from around the world", according to Zhang Xiaoding, general manager of the opera house.

A third pillar of the opening season is still to come: Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden arrives with Der Rosenkavalier on Nov 8, 10, and 12, conducted by its music director Christian Thielemann — the company's first visit to China with its full original cast and crew.

Zhang describes the new house as the final piece in Shanghai's theater ecosystem, striking a balance in performing-arts resources across the two banks of the Huangpu. Since tickets for the opening season went on sale, buyers have come from 25 countries and regions, she said, adding that the house will also host open rehearsals, master classes, and educational events to build interest and bring in new audiences.

Shanghai has the largest live entertainment market in China, Cao Yixia, a research fellow at the Institute of Applied Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said. In 2025, the city hosted 61,400 commercial performances, drawing 26.85 million spectators and 5.85 billion yuan ($820 million) at the box office — first in the country on both counts, and up 7.7 and 13.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.

Going to the theater has become part of everyday spending in Shanghai rather than an occasional treat. The city's venue landscape is layered — top-tier houses such as SGOH fill the long-standing gap of a purpose-built opera venue, while around 100 alternative performance spaces have sprung up in shopping malls, office towers, industrial parks, and historic buildings. Those spaces staged more than 16,700 shows last year.