https://www.npr.org/2025/11/28/nx-s1-5620768/monkey-king-chinese-opera-san-francisco

November 28,2025, All Thigs Considered Excerpts

A 400-year-old kung fu-fighting monkey is finally having his American moment

The Monkey King is having a moment in America — and it’s been centuries in the making.  Wildly popular across Asia for generations as the focus of hundreds of adaptations on page, stage and screen, the Chinese superhero is also the star of a 2023 Netflix animated film, a blockbuster 2024 video game, and right now, a sold-out new opera at San Francisco Opera by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang. Not bad for a character who made his literary debut in a 16th century Ming Dynasty novel.

The monkey who would be king – Drawn to chaos- The Monkey King isn’t your typical square-jawed, noble superhero. Though he’s on a quest for enlightenment, Monkey is also a loud-mouthed mischief-maker. 

“I think we loved the monkey because of his courage, his longing for freedom, and his defiance against the gods,” said Chinese Australian tenor Kang Wang, who plays the title role in the world premiere San Francisco Opera production and grew up obsessed with a 1980s live-action Chinese TV adaptation of the Monkey King story. “Also, he’s very playful. He’s always super happy and never sad.”

“This many-sidedness is key to understanding the character’s wide appeal. In Asia, the Monkey King has been reimagined as everything from a Communist-style proletarian hero fighting an oppressive bourgeoisie in the 1960s Chinese animated film Havoc in Heaven, to a cyborg in Sci-Fi West Saga Starzinger, a 1970s Japanese sci-fi anime series.”

“American Monkey- American audiences have been slower to embrace the simian superhero — until now.”