Combining the best of both worlds

Among the lecturers offering the training are more than 35 leading artists and scholars in the sector.

They include leading singers Guo Shuzhen and Yan Weiwen, composer Yin Qing and director Li Xincao, to name just a few.

"They are now offering lectures, body and figure training and performance practice to those trainees, as well as conducting one-to-one interviews with trainees, in a bid to improve their comprehensive capabilities in understanding music and drama, their singing skills, and to upgrade their performance capabilities," Wang says.

He adds: "As an artist, in my personal career as a singer, an opera performer and now an art college head, I have found that it is of great importance to boost cultural prosperity by ensuring the younger generations inherit the arts, and by sustainably educating and fostering younger artists."

The training program is a key step to tackle the challenges facing further innovation, Wang says.

Wang Mingliang, director of the Management Center of the China National Arts Fund, says that over the past 70 years, the country has seen the integration of Western opera, which is touted as "the brightest jewel in the crown of art", with Chinese ethics, philosophies and traditional cultures.