A scene from the Weekly Classic program of China Showbiz at CCTV4, broadcast on April 26.[photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"I had no idea what happened in the two-to-three years after my personal chat with Premier Zhou," Liu recalled, "but right before graduation, I was suddenly called to audition in front of several strange people who heard me sing two songs." They turned out to be inspectors from the opera troupe.

A career at the troupe was new to Liu, a long-time lover of Peking Opera and quyi folk performances usually sung to the accompaniment of a single instrument such as drum, one or two-stringed instruments.

Liu was the youngest of eight children born to a chief telephone engineer in Beijing, and a bout of pneumonia he had soon after birth left him dumb until the age of 5, when he suddenly started to follow music on the radio and sing tale verses in Peking style to drum accompaniment. The radio and various recordings of Peking Opera and local folk performances were his favorite possessions in childhood.

"Traditional music gave me the voice and life," Liu said, his eyes shining through a heavy round face.

Yet singing in the opera troupe proved to be a challenge, in terms of both musical and theatrical ability, and even age. "I was soon selected as the stage partner of the top soprano Guo Lanying." Guo was a famous singer even when Liu was a pupil.

Instead of continuous Wagnerian melody, modern Chinese operas combined song and speech, in line of such light operatic forms as French comic opera, German singspiel and British ballad opera. Liu’s first major role was as the title character in The Marriage of Xiao Erhei, a love story set in changing rural China. The youthful, vibrant nature of his timbre that Premier Zhou had noticed matched the young hero well, but Liu still wanted to excel.