Music: Peking to Paris

Peking opera hit Paris last week, and Paris was fascinated. "The most beautiful spectacle in the world," marveled the weekly Carrefour, "More than original and singular . . . prodigious," said Le Figaro. "By comparison," added the awed Arts, "Frenchmen see themselves as barbarians." Night after night, the company, official representative of the People's Republic of China to Paris' International Theater Festival, exploded like a magnum of vintage champagne.

In truth, the potion was more like a pousse-café, an adroitly chosen series of excerpts from Chinese operas that—in China—may run as long as seven hours apiece. It went heavy on astonishing acrobatics,...

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