The Monkey shines: In what looks certain to be San Francisco Opera’s most eye-popping and resplendent production of the season, Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s “The Monkey King” makes its world premiere on the War Memorial Opera House stage at 7:30 p.m. Friday for an eight- performance run that will end with a 2 p.m. matinee on Nov. 30. It’s based on “Journey to the West,” an epic Ming Dynasty Chinese novel that has become all-pervasive over the four centuries, having sparked innumerable artworks, plays, movies, TV shows, comics and graphic literature, music, dance and even video games. At its center is the irrepressible Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, an iconic character who carries every bit as much cultural weight as Western superheroes such as Batman and Superman, who does battle with deities on heaven and earth in his quest for immortality. Composer Huang and librettist Hwang, whose previous collaborations include the operatic version of Hwang’s 1988 play “M. Butterfly,” blend Eastern and Western traditions in the opera, sung in Mandarin and English and enhanced with puppetry, projections, dance and gorgeous costuming. Singing the title role in his San Francisco debut is Australian tenor Kang Wang, with South Korean tenor Konu Kim performing as the Jade Emperor and soprano Mei Gui Zhang as the Chinese goddess of compassion Guanyin. The conductor is Hartford Symphony music director Carolyn Kuan, who led the world premiere of “M. Butterfly” in Santa Fe in 2022. Tickets for the production are $29-$447, but only $25 for the livestream of the Nov. 18 performance.
