Music in the Summer Air festival opens in Shanghai

(ECNS) -- The 2026 Music in the Summer Air festival (MISA) kicked off on Sunday evening at the Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall with a music-and-drama performance of Hamlet.

The production was directed by Li Liuyi, one of China's most internationally influential theater directors. It featured performers Pu Cunxin and Feng Xianzhen as "readers" alongside the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

The production used incidental music composed by Dmitri Shostakovich for a 1932 production of Hamlet at the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow.

"Language is linear, and music is color," Pu said. "With Shakespeare's linear language, we sketched out branches in Shostakovich's colors, and between reason and emotion, such a beautiful work was born."

The festival, themed "Pioneers — Moving Forward with Music," will present 33 live performances through July 20, spanning classical music, theater, literature, dance, film music, jazz and folk music.

(By Tang Yuxian)