WHEN Zhang Jianyi sang in a workers' group advocating the new Constitution in the 1970s, he didn't realize he had the special talent required for a career in music.

"I just found it easy when singing the high notes," said the tenor, recalling his early years.

Over the past 18 years, Zhang has performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the national opera houses of Berlin, Paris and Madrid, to name just a few.

His singing career started when he was working as a stoker in a glass factory in his hometown of Huzhou in neighbouring Zhejiang Province. The job was dirty and tiring so to change his surroundings, he joined a so-called "propaganda group", singing revolutionary songs.

He tried to join a professional troupe but in the years that followed the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), it was impossible because of his family background. His father was a graduate from the Huangpu Military Academy, a leading school known for supplying high officials to the Kuomintang regime.

Although he had always liked music and had later joined the Hangzhou Songs and Dance Troupe, he never planned to make singing a life-long career. His parents had traditional attitudes and thought acting or singing were inferior occupations which people looked down upon.

Cultural barrier

Even when he successfully passed the college entrance examination to study at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, he and his parents thought he would graduate to become a music teacher.

But then he won an award granted by the Ministry of Culture and as a prize, the school offered him a post-graduate programme without examination.

Then an unexpected opportunity sent him to the US before he had completed the programme. Together with some other rising Chinese opera stars, Zhang was invited to tour the US. A simple audition brought him full scholarship at The Julliard School in New York, one of the top five music schools in the world.

He won several international awards while at The Julliard School. "That was only in recognition of studies undertaken," Zhang said. It did not mean he had suddenly become a world-class opera singer. "It doesn't mean you have met the test of the market," he said.

New problems appeared when he had mastered the language barrier after special training in European languages and he was ready to step onto the stage as a member of an "A" class opera ensemble.

One night, when Zhang was appearing in Puccini's "La Boheme" for the first time in the US, as the hero Rodolfo, a poet, he was supposed to kiss the heroine, Mimi, while singing the aria, "Your tiny hand is frozen".

The soprano singing Mimi was surprised to see Zhang feigning a kiss instead of really kissing her on the lips. She asked aloud, "Why don't you kiss me? Don't you like me or what?" Zhang was very embarrassed but he found it extremely difficult to kiss someone in public.

Trying to explain his difficulty to the soprano, he said he had never even seen his parents kiss, which she could not believe.

Such kinds of "cultural frustration" accompanied him in his first few years of singing.

"I made myself believe I was an Italian," he said and recalled another difficult scene when he had to jump over a wall to meet his lover. Again, there was supposed to have been a hot kiss but Zhang was only able to do it nervously and stiffly.

Born into a working-class family, Zhang found it difficult to act an aristocratic role or a passionate lover like Alfredo in Verdi's "La Traviata". So, he started to read Western literary classics. The vivid descriptions in the books helped him greatly. "I felt like Alfredo when I went on the stage pulling the gloves, finger by finger, off my hand," he said.

By and by, the scope of his reading broadened to religion, psychology and art history. "These books helped me to break through the cultural barrier," Zhang said and only five years later he felt it was no longer a serious problem in his career.

Unique characteristics

Classical opera, with its deep European roots, has been viewed as an art form that can represent the state of a country's performing arts. "It is a very costly art and needs government support," Zhang said. "It is the same worldwide." He cited the operation of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. "Even if all tickets are sold, the income only covers 45 per cent of the cost of each show." The rest of the expense has to come from private donations and government support.

Zhang compared Chinese folk opera with Western opera: "You can start quite late and still succeed in Western music, but if you learn Chinese Peking Opera at the same stage, you can't possibly turn professional."

But Peking Opera, like many other folk opera forms in China, has little variation in its melodies and music. And for people without sufficient knowledge about the art form, it is difficult to understand and enjoy, let alone being able to form a personal critical judgement about a performance.

"I have always dreamed of performing in Chinese opera works," Zhang said. He takes every opportunity to recommend modern Chinese work to Western opera companies.

A modern Chinese opera - "The Savage Land" - was staged in Washington last year. When he heard a Western chorus singing in Chinese, he felt both proud and amazed.

The opera ran for over 20 shows and enjoyed good returns at the box office. "The music was totally new to Western audiences. It was like colours they had never seen before," he said.

Unlike Shanghai, where only a few operatic plays are shown every year, many more are shown each season in European cities such as Vienna and Berlin, including some comparatively lesser-staged works like Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" from Russia.

"Russian actors present shows of very high quality for little pay," Zhang said.

And operas in the US and Europe are presented and received in different ways. European opera directors are willing to try modern stage design, leaving much space for the actors, while US theatres are larger so that singers have to sing more loudly.

Working as a guest lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory, Zhang found problems with the music education of China. "Students are not encouraged to develop personal styles. Women share very similar sharp voices." But the world stage need voices with unique characteristics. For example, Zhang found that he was good in lyrical French opera roles. "Only if you can sing roles in a truly distinctive way can you survive in the top opera companies," he said.

In the first few years he spent abroad, there were many new Chinese opera singers on Western stages, but five years later, only a few could still be heard and today, "I don't see anyone".

In order to keep on singing in world-class opera companies until his mid-60s, which is his career plan, he has had to work so hard that his daughter came to believe a singer's life was miserable. "She had many unpleasant memories travelling with me," said Zhang of his teenage daughter.

"Father would not say anything on the day of his performance. He was always reading the score or sleeping," his daughter said. She added that Zhang would not even join them when she and her mother went sight-seeing.