THE 2026 Shenzhen Belt & Road International Music Festival will open with a dazzling concert, “Silk Road New Chapter,” bringing together Western opera classics, newly commissioned works, and original Shenzhen compositions in a symphonic celebration of cultural exchange.

Conductor Lin Daye will lead the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra (SZSO) through the evening with a carefully curated program bridging Eastern and Western musical traditions.

South African soprano Pretty Yende, a regular at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Paris Opera, will make her Chinese debut at this concert. She was the first African solo artist to perform at the coronation of King Charles III of the U.K. and has also graced the reopening memorial concert of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Chinese tenor Wang Kang, the only Chinese tenor admitted to the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, will join the lineup. Critics have described his voice as “flowing gold.”

The instrumental segment features suona virtuoso Zhang Qianyuan, the only musician in China to have won both the Golden Bell Award and the Wenhua Award, and Italian pianist Edoardo Turbil, an accomplished performer of solo and chamber music worldwide and a faculty member at CUHK-Shenzhen.

The concert will open with Smetana’s “Vltava” from “Má Vlast” and feature the world premiere of “Suona Forte!” — a concerto for suona, piano, and orchestra by Italian composer Nicola Campogrande, jointly commissioned by the Shenzhen festival and Bologna’s Municipal Theater. Arias from Puccini’s “La Bohème” and Verdi’s “La Traviata” will follow, alongside Ye Xiaogang’s “The Shenzhen Story” dance suite, a five-movement symphonic tribute to the city’s transformation.

Time: 8 p.m., Sept. 11

Venue: Opera Hall, Longgang International Arts Center, Longgang District (龙岗国际艺术中心歌剧厅)

Metro: Line 10 to Bei’er Road Station (贝尔路站), Exit D(Tang Li)