The Fat Lady Is Singing.(chinese opera)

Zhang Minglu remembers a time when Beijing opera buffs were so enthralled with his performances that they would throw gold coins onto the stage. "In my day, 80 percent of the people loved opera, and they could spend the whole day at the opera house," recalls Zhang, 81, an acrobat once renowned for his role as the Monkey King in "Journey to the West." But these days, Beijing productions play to half-empty houses. Box-office receipts have plummeted, and government subsidies have dried up. Of the people who do attend, fewer and fewer are Chinese; at the People's Theater, the foreign audience has grown by 30 percent over the past five years. At the Chang An, tourists now compose 40 percent of the audience.

Still, the fat lady has not quite finished singing. The ancient art form--which combines music, dance, martial arts, acrobatics, acting and a distinctive caterwauling--is struggling to reinvent itself in order to compete with the rising tide of films, music and TV shows flooding China. "Western movies and music are like a virus," says Ghaffar Pourazar, a Brit who has studied opera in China for the past decade. "Beijing opera takes a lot of education to appreciate, but with modern culture, there's an immediate buzz."

Beijing opera is doing its best to generate a bit more of that buzz. Wang Yuzhen, president of the Beijing Opera Troupe, says productions are dramatically shortening five- and six-hour operas by cutting out scenes and scaling down performances to use just two or three actors. In a recent production of "Water Thrown Before the Horse," the director incorporated mime for the first time, and the cast donned their colorful costumes in front of the audience. Other productions are using more quirky props and dazzling acrobatics. And to woo younger audiences, they are taking per-formances on the road to universities around the ...