Your July Checklist for Beijing

First performed in Vienna on September 30 1791, The Magic Flute was Mozart’s last opera before his premature death two months later. A celebration of true love conquering all, with off-beat, even supernatural characters and lots of Masonic ritual. The Magic Flute tells the tale of Prince Tamino’s quest to rescue the Queen of the Night’s daughter Pamina; the 1927 theatre company elements means that Tamino is borne aloft by moths, Pamina is trapped in a snow globe, and the Queen of the Night is a giant spider—and that’s just the beginning. This blend of opera and animation comes courtesy of 1927 and Komische Oper, and is the show to see this summer.

Paul Andreu

Mon 12 Jun – Fri 14 Jul (Every weekday)

Yishu 8 (艺术8) , 20 Donghuangchenggen Beijie

Paul Andreu embodies the Franco-Chinese cultural relationship, albeit with enormous modesty and brilliance. Andreu has a strong commitment to China and in his creative life, he has established a rare relationship with the country, based on sincerity, risk-taking, listening to others and also responding to himself as an artist. For Paul Andreu, a brilliant engineer and world-famous architect, is above all an artist.

Poet, writer, painter, architect: don’t these roles give him very different outlooks on the world? It is the richness and complexity of Paul Andreu that we will reveal with his recent works. These works on paper, created in the Parisian studio, act as a silent dialogue with China. The artist plays with the paper, provokes it, crumbles it, waits for it to answer. Landscapes and footprints appear, they reveal a natural movement, hoped for, without ever being controlled. It is the movement of a silent heart that seeks to make the murmur of the Chinese soul heard among the folds and fissures of the paper.