Aug 30, 2013, was just a regular weekend day in Xiamen in eastern China's Fujian province. But for Huang Anlun, a veteran Chinese composer, it carried more meaning.

That evening, under the baton of Zheng Xiaoying, China's first female conductor, who was 84 then, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra debuted the Chinese opera Yue Fei at the concert hall of Xiamen University. It was an opera that Huang had started writing when he was 22, and he had waited for 35 years to have it finally played in public.

"When it really happened, I couldn't even believe it," recalls Huang, 66, who is now in Beijing preparing for Yue Fei.

Music from the opera will be staged in Tianjin on Thursday and Saturday, and full-scale performances will be staged at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts in September.

Born in Guangdong province in South China, Huang moved to Tianjin at 3 with his musician parents. He graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and has been a prolific composer.

Huang has created more than 40 symphonic works for operas, chamber music presentations, ballets, theatrical dramas and movies.

More than 20 of his works have been chosen for the collections of "National Musical 100 Years", the country's official music publishing project.

But Huang says: "Yue Fei completed me as a composer."

He attributed the opera to conductor Zheng, who was his co-worker at China National Opera House in 1977. The opera marked the beginning of a mentor-pupil relationship between the two.