The Monkey King is an action-packed new opera adapted from the first chapters of Journey to the West, an epic novel of the Chinese literary canon. It is the third new San Francisco Opera production supported by the Koret Foundation. Commissioned by SF Opera with commissioning support from the Chinese Heritage Foundation of Minnesota, The Monkey King made its world premiere in San Francisco in November 2025. With this work, composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang introduce opera-goers to a hero who overcomes great adversity during his quest for immortality, along the path to enlightenment.

Doreen Woo Ho, co-chair of the Monkey King Committee, enthuses, “To me this opera represents a huge opportunity to build a people-to-people cultural bridge between the U.S. and China as Monkey King, who is such a beloved figure, resonates across so many Asian communities here and in Asia.” She spearheaded fundraising throughout the Bay Area, courting four-, five-, six- and seven-figure benefactors in both the Asian and the tech communities, with impressive success. Such philanthropic support has been key for the company both behind the scenes, by enabling the creative team to fully express their creative vision, and in the front of the house, by bringing in new opera-goers.

The eight performances of The Monkey King were sold out to wildly enthusiastic audiences, who were transfixed during the production and expressed their delight with standing ovations. Around 50% of single ticket buyers were new to San Francisco Opera, thanks in no small part to subsidized ticketing programs underwritten by two local foundations, the Dolby Family Fund and the Bernard Osher Foundation. 

We had spoken with General Director Matthew Shilvock back in the spring of 2023, during the SF Opera’s centennial season, about the trio of new works the Koret Foundation had supported. El último sueño de Frida y Diego, Omar, and the at-the-time-unnamed The Monkey King were all intended to welcome new creative voices to the stage and to cultivate new audiences for SF Opera. We recently chatted again with Mr. Shilvock about the beginning of the company’s second century in general, and The Monkey King in particular.

KF: The Monkey King is contemporary, in that it’s a new opera, but it’s based on an old story with a beloved hero. It’s been told not only in books, but also in television series, movies, and even in the recent, highly successful video game Black Myth: Wukong. An action hero is not your typical operatic protagonist.

MS: True enough. The composer, Huang Ruo, had a very personal desire to create a ‘magical kung fu opera,’ with an American-Asian hero that his children—who are growing up in the U.S.—could relate to, with the same excitement that they might a Marvel-style character. The opera opens with the monkey being born out of a stone. He has to go behind a waterfall—beautifully evoked with undulating silks in our production. A few minutes later, he’s in a Taoist school. He will go under the seas, up to heaven, and engage in dramatic battles. He will steal luscious peaches from a peach tree, to take back to the monkey nation. He lets horses escape, and he gets cooked in an oven for 49 days…. How do we take all of this and turn it into something not just theatrical but also emotionally captivating? How do we take advantage of what opera does best, which is to make you cry?  

KF: So how did you go about ‘making the audience cry’ in this action drama? 

MS: By thinking about the whole story at a very early stage. It’s the creative genius of Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang. Before the libretto or the music, they came up with a detailed synopsis—just a couple of pages long. That was the seed that allowed us to discuss questions of structure. And that led to some really interesting developments, including the big idea of bringing in the famous, paradoxical Diamond Sutra and Buddhist tradition and weaving these deep reflections in, sung in Chinese. The Guanyin character brings the Chinese language—Mandarin specifically—into the opera—which is in contemporary English. She’s kind of the deus ex machina who’s guiding the monkey on his journey. And we needed to create the illusion of his journey, to create a very ephemeral world that can keep changing. And who and how can you create those illusions in a way that is viable, but also exciting and beautiful? With puppetry, and silks, and some digital magic. The creative team has done a magnificent job of making it easy for the audience to suspend disbelief, to accompany the monkey on his journey. We also have supertitles in both languages. The banner in English is suspended stage center, above the action, and the Chinese unfurls on a pair of vertical scrolls mounted to the left and right of the stage.

KF: Let’s shift focus, please, and talk about how your philanthropic partnerships are helping SF Opera attract new audiences—and who these new opera-goers are.

In the post-pandemic period, we’ve given serious thought to how we structure our relationship with the audience and how we can create a real dynamic energy in the Opera House. Our team’s willingness to try things—some of which have been terrifically successful—and the support of our philanthropic partners have really borne fruit. The Dolby Family Fund subsidizes tickets for performances, and also for concerts, to attract new audience members. We are able to offer the Dolby tickets at $10/per seat. People can buy two tickets at this price—and Dolby began doing this during our 2022–23 season. Since the Dolby partnership’s inception—so three-and-a-half seasons so far, 24,918 new audience members have taken advantage of this ticket offer. When the Dolby tickets went on sale for The Monkey King back in October this year, we sold about 950 of them in 30 minutes. Yes, they’re $10 tickets, but it’s clear that people are waiting with bated breath to push the button and get these tickets. We know that they are overall a younger demographic than our existing audience, and over 80% of them are brand new to us, they’ve never been in our database. We also know that 25% of Dolby ticket purchasers come back for a second opera within 12 months—which is a very high retention rate for a first-time audience.

KF: That’s impressive! It’s rather a steep leap from $10 to a full-price ticket.

MS: That’s true. As part of the Dolby program, we ease opera-goers gradually towards full-price tickets. And with our Osher Subscription program, we also invite them to consider purchasing a subscription as well. The program provides graduated pricing, basically three successive tickets for the cost of one full-price ticket. At every point, we’re trying to give someone a way to be able to say yes to us—and then to give them a great experience in the Opera House. We are also building trust in this space, a space where people can come and have a deeply emotional experience, to be emotionally vulnerable. And in order to be vulnerable, you do not want to be feeling anxious about the expense or your surroundings.

KF: In addition to affordability, of course, is the matter of repertoire, of what new audiences might be excited to see.

MS: Absolutely. Pieces like Frida y Diego and Omar and now Monkey King really prove that new operas can have a similar sales profile to classic favorites like Carmen and La Bohème. Adding titles to the mix of favorites is hugely important, as well as performing other pieces—like Innocence or The Handmaid’s Tale or Dead Man Walking—which may not sell out houses, but that hold a deep sense of social connection to the stories that are being told on the opera stage. It’s also interesting that—almost as a rule of thumb—if you come to a contemporary opera first, you are most likely to come back for traditional opera. We see people taking a chance on titles that they want to come and see, and then falling in love with the experience.

KF: Can you talk a bit more about expanding the performance—the actual production that the audience sees on the stage—into a larger experience?

MS:  We continue to try different ways of connecting to people. The experience shouldn’t just be about when the curtain goes up, it’s how people feel before and after—and how we can curate the experience to really build that sense of trust. Internally, we talk about ‘softening the edges,’ finding ways to engage people as they are coming into the building and through the lobby. We don’t want the audience to be overwhelmed by the grandeur of the space, we want them to be drawn in, to sense that cool things are happening around them already—whether it’s performers interacting with people, or something more culturally specific for a particular audience.

KF: Could you elaborate a bit on the idea of “cultural specificity”?

MS: Our production of Omar was a great example. Omar, the hero, is an Islamic scholar before being captured and enslaved. We knew the audience included many members of the Islamic community, and we received feedback at the very beginning of the run—it might even have been at the dress rehearsal—that it would have been deeply meaningful if there were a prayer space in the lobby that the audience could use. That is something we had not anticipated—and had certainly not done before—but we were able to put two prayer spaces, one for men and one for women, in place for the remainder of the run.

For Frida y Diego, it was much more about encouraging people to dress up as Frida Kahlo, to increase the swirl of energy and excitement. We had food outside, dancing outside, and so forth. We’ve also expanded upwards in the building, mounting art installations on the Grand Tier level, relating to a specific opera.

For Monkey King, we had an exhibition of various depictions and interpretations of the Monkey King character by Bay Area artists. The installation was curated by Art Builds Community with co-curator Caitlin Pambid. Art Builds Community also organized a Chinese market, including cultural demonstrations, in the courtyard. The market was open not only to ticket-holders, but to the public, to everyone.

KF: SF Opera must be on a high right now, after the hugely successful run of this world premiere. Are you optimistic about the future? 

MS: Yes! I am very optimistic about the future! Although SF Opera is facing the challenging, existential economic issues faced by so many in the arts at the moment, there are hugely positive trends balancing that out. The house is selling out. We’re seeing audiences getting younger. We’re seeing more people. Last year we had 1,200 new subscribers—an 11% increase in subscriptions. So, I think the perception that subscription is dead is a fallacy. All of this positive stuff is happening, but it co-exists with ongoing economic challenges because—to make a long story, a tale of two realities, short—only 14% of our revenue comes from ticket sales. So you can sell out every seat in the house, you know, at full price, and still have an economic challenge—but this does not mean that there’s no interest. We have an extraordinary audience, spectacular philanthropic partnerships—including the Koret Foundation—and a wonderfully dynamic artistic energy around both new and traditional operas! The interest in opera is as high as I have ever seen it—there is incredible energy in the Opera House as people yearn for deep, transcendent, powerful experiences. Experiences in community with other people are relatively few and far between. I think people are increasingly hungry for this.