In mid-March, Prof Michael Steinberg from the Brown University was invited to launch a lecture titled “Provincializing European Opera” at our University. The lecture examined a selected series of celebrated European operas in their respective significance in historical, cultural and political evolution. Prof Steinberg’s galvanizing inter-disciplinary study of the western opera was delivered with the wish to illuminate the study of Chinese opera at our University. The event also featured Kunqu performances which initiated a cultural exchange of the art of the West and the East at CUHK, with the interest to develop possibly a summer program in comparative operatic musicology, with potential support from the CCK Foundation.