Press

November 11, 2025

Huang links this concept of a third culture with what he calls dimensionalism, his neologism for how he sees art and life itself. 'When cultures or characters intersect, new layers emerge. I want to see the complete picture — that’s why I love opera: It lets me create all those dimensions at once.'

October 23, 2025

'When I first saw Ang Lee’s classic film many years ago, I knew immediately it would make a great opera. The opera tells a heartfelt, human story that celebrates friendship and found family, queer love, and cultural identity. Given what these films have meant to me, I am thrilled now to be joining James Schamus and a new generation of artists reimagining this classic work for today through an operatic lens.'

January 9, 2024

'When I first received a poetry book from Charlton Lee from the Del Sol Quartet, it just strikes me deeply of what happened on the Angel Island. I could read those original texts in Chinese characters and almost I can feel their voice through those words. From that, we decided to create a stage work or a stage oratorio, opera theater, depends on what you want to call it, to really show our audience about this dark history of Asian-American journey.'

January 7, 2024

The oratorio also tackles the legacy of injustice and discrimination against people of Asian descent in America...Huang described "Angel Island" as activist art, saying he wanted to 'give people history that they didn't learn in school...This is not just a Chinese American story,' he said. 'This is an American story.'

August 5, 2022

'I saw several versions of the play, and I often felt it needed to be told in musical form because it was so related to Puccini and to the reversal of “Madama Butterfly.” I felt in opera I could freely integrate — to twist and to turn, to create all the drama with the music. Some plays should never be touched or turned into opera, but I felt this was one of the rare cases where it could work.'

August 1, 2022

'When I turned 30, I wrote my first opera, "Dr. Sun Yat-Sen," and I thought, this feels like home. This makes sense to me. Everything I’ve done in the past was building to this moment. Suddenly, there was this big U-turn in my career. I’ve written eight operas since 2011, and it has a lot to do with my childhood opera experiences.'

January 18, 2022

'To me the idea is to use music to bring downthe barrier of what the physical wall normally is.'

October 22, 2021

In a recent interview, Ruo said that the research trip was a visceral journey — he went from regaling in the beautiful outdoor scenery to understanding something of the horror of being confined indoors.

January 8, 2019

"Mr. Ruo’s style, well suited to theatrical works, vividly blends Chinese melodic elements and skittish dance riffs with tartly modernist contemporary sounds and pointillist bursts."

July 1, 2016

“A cutting-edge opera for the next generation.”

June 14, 2016

“A Powerful Opera of Eastern and Western Allure… The engrossing chamber opera Paradise Interrupted could easily have ended up a clichéd, cross-cultural mess. Opera has long been an art form that draws together music, poetry, theater, dance and other genres. But few works mingle different elements so ambitiously as Paradise Interrupted. That this 80-minute opera proved so alluring and powerful is due largely to the inventive and personal music of its composer, Huang Ruo.”

May 26, 2015

“A mesmerizing new work that is part opera, part dynamic art installation.”

January 16, 2012

Huang Ruo is achieving something new and exciting in music, and conveys a command of the latest developments in the classical tradition and the sounds and musical conceptions of his native China.