Performers › Musicians
Wang Kun
Soprano from Tang County, Hebei, who created the role of Xi'er in the 1945 premiere of the opera The White-Haired Girl and sang folk-style songs such as Nanniwan.
Mural of the cultural record “National Opera”, which this person is tied to.
Wang Kun, a soprano, was born in April 1925 in Nanguan village, Tang County, Hebei. In 1944 she went to Yan'an and studied theatre music at the Lu Xun Academy of Arts. When the opera The White-Haired Girl premiered there in April 1945 she sang Xi'er, and her portrayal set the pattern later singers followed. Her renditions of Nanniwan, Qiushou, Fuqi shizi and Shaanbei daoqing became widely known. From 1964 she was a soloist of the Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble and became its director in 1982, training singers such as Yuan Zheng, Zheng Xulan and Zhu Mingying. She died on 21 November 2014.
Life and times
Dates 1925 CE–2014 CE