The opera Turandot by Chinese director Zhang Yimou will begin its world tour in France Stadium in Paris this Saturday.

Nearly six hundred performers are involved in the opera.

Italian composer Giacomo Puccini wrote Turandot in 1924, which tells the dramatic love story of a Chinese princess.

Zhang was invited to stage the opera Turandot in the World Cup Stadium in Seoul in 2003, which celebrated the first anniversary of the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup.

Zhang and his team repeated the sumptuous production in the Forbidden City in Beijing the following year with an audience of 36,000.

The next leg of its world tour will be Munich and Barcelona.

(CRI.com May 26, 2005)