'The Last Empress,' a pioneering original musical, celebrates 2 million attendees
In 1982, Korean producer Yun Ho-jin traveled to the UK to study theater, and there he saw the musical "Cats." The experience was a revelation, Yun recalled, sparking the realization that South Korea would embrace the genre and needed its own original musical theater productions.
When he came back to Korea four years later, he wanted to create a production that could be a global success. Around that time, there was a reinterpretation of Empress Myeongseong, the last empress of the Joseon era who was assassinated by Japanese soldiers in 1895 and was long perceived negatively as a queen blinded by power.
The producer urged renowned writer Yi Mun-yeol, now 76, to spend a year writing a story about Empress Myeongseong. Yi wrote “Fox Hunting” in 1994.
“I didn’t even intend to write about Empress Myeongseong, but Yoon kept nagging me for almost a year, and this is how it turned out,” the author said during a reception on Tuesday at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.
The music was composed by a renowned husband-and-wife duo: composer Kim Hee-gap and lyricist Yang In-ja, both originally from North Korea. It was the first time the esteemed composer had worked on a musical.
In December 1995, marking the 100th anniversary of the queen consort's death, "The Last Empress" premiered at the Seoul Arts Center under the direction of Yun.
True to his vision, the production was later staged internationally, beginning at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre in 1997 and 1998, followed by LA’s Shubert Theatre in 1998, then London in 2002, and Toronto in 2004.
As of Monday, Acom, the production company behind “The Last Empress,” said the musical surpassed 2 million cumulative attendees in Korea.
“I believe that if we add universality to something uniquely ours, it is more than possible. With that thought in mind, we have come this far,” Yun said during a press conference on Tuesday.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, “The Last Empress” kicked off in January at the Grand Theater of the Sejong Center.
For the 30th anniversary edition, three top musical theater performers have been enlisted to portray the queen: classical soprano-turned-musical stage performer Kim So-hyun, Shin Young-sook and Cha Ji-yeon, who is joining the musical for the first time. The role of King Gojong is played alternately by Kang Pil-seok and two classical baritones-turned-musical theater performers, Kim Joo-taek and Son Jun-ho, the latter of whom is Kim So-hyun’s husband.
Yun said he is working to create a musical adaptation of “The Song of the Sword,” a historical novel by South Korean writer Kim Hoon, published in 2001. The novel, written from a first-person perspective, portrays Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a war hero who fended off Japanese invasions in the 1590s, as a deeply introspective and tormented human being. Yun said “The Song of the Sword” will complete his history trilogy along with “The Last Empress" and “Hero,” a musical about Ahn Jung-geun, the independence activist who assassinated Hirobumi Ito, Japan’s first prime minister and the first Japanese resident-general in Korea, in Harbin, China, in 1909.
“The Last Empress” runs until March 30 at the Sejong Center.
