Nurturing audiences and talent highlighted in inaugural Beijing forum bringing together leading institutions.

Editor's Note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. This is part of a series looking at the significant developments in various fields as the country increases its interaction with the world.

Born in 1947 in Vienna, one of the world's music capitals, Alexander Pereira dreamed of becoming an opera singer.

While he did not quite make the cut to take the stage, Pereira said his career in identifying and developing talent for the opera and other performing arts has been no less fulfilling.

"God gave me another beautiful talent ... to look at how a person will sing," says Pereira, who is CEO and artistic director of Italy's iconic, 240-year-old Teatro alla Scala opera house.

Pereira was speaking at the inaugural Beijing Forum for Performing Arts in June, where he joined about 200 counterparts and top industry professionals from nearly 70 leading institutions of over 20 countries and regions to discuss the latest developments in the field and exchange ideas toward its growth.

Hosted by the capital's National Centre for the Performing Arts, forum participants covered topics ranging from theater operations and management to arts education and audience development.

Tracing the achievements of the performing arts in China in the past few decades on the back of the country's rapid development, NCPA President Wang Ning says theater has been an important platform for global and cultural exchange.

In the last decade, artists have taken to the center stage more than 300,000 times, with its shows attracting nearly 1 million visits every year, Wang says. Collaborations with more than 130 countries and over 400 international arts institutions have also been forged, as well as cooperation agreements inked with more than 30 major groups abroad.

"Chinese and foreign artists have come together here with audiences, through mutual respect and appreciation, toward cultural exchange and development," he says.

"The theater is an important link between different countries, different nationalities and different cultures."

Figures from the center also showed that those aged under 45 made up nearly 70 percent of its audience, of which students comprised more than 14 percent, with symphonies a major draw, Wang says.

Still, as Pereira highlighted, forum participants agreed there was the challenge of nurturing and maintaining interest among the young to fuel the continued development of opera and theater for arts institutions worldwide.

Anna Weber, artistic and operations general manager of New York City's Carnegie Hall, says an expansion of its music education and partnership programs now include connecting children and families, local communities, less advantaged groups, students and budding musicians.

Weber also lauds the hall's "special relationship with China and its partnerships with NCPA", encompassing shows that present world-class Chinese artists, citywide festivals that celebrate Chinese arts and culture, and youth orchestra visits to China.

Other than performing concerts, the team members were cultural ambassadors "interacting with audiences and young Chinese musicians", she says.

Christopher Deacon, president and CEO of the National Arts Centre of Canada, spoke about the importance of creating space for indigenous artistic expression in the country's national institutions.

"Indigenous peoples have lived in Canada for tens of thousands of years. They've created and evolved rich cultures," he says.

"Over the last two decades the NAC has been building relationships with indigenous artists and communities ... Since 2006 our music education department has worked with indigenous artists and communities through its 'Music Alive' program, which currently engages over 100 indigenous teaching artists in rural and remote communities including in the far north."

Chloe Samaniego, director designate of the international development department at the Opera National de Paris, stressed the need to break the barriers "that make someone think they don't belong in the audience of an opera house or a concert hall". Measures to reach a wider audience to preserve opera as not just an artistic form "but also as a collective, cultural experience" include tapping broadcast capabilities and rolling out joint programs with other arts institutions to help transcend natural boundaries.

"Developing audiences is a necessity in the cultural field in general and a fruitful one in the operatic world in particular ... the power of living art ... relies entirely on the link established between artists and the public," she says.

Wu Han, artistic director for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center under New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, says that her group is similarly reaching out via digital archives compiled through decades, partnerships with public broadcasters, social media channels and global tours.

"Also, always ... you need to present the best of your art form. You want to make sure your concert is so spectacular, you want to make sure your musicians are so passionate and love the art form so much that they are willing to rehearse and they are willing to sweat blood," she says.

"So when they come on stage, they are so excited about what they are doing, the audience knows."

Valenti Oviedo Cornejo, general manager of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, also pointed to the various initiatives rolled out by his opera house to adapt to the needs of tech-savvy millennials, such as increasing the use of social networks and other digital platforms to bring its programs closer to younger audiences, on top of discounted ticket prices to entice them.

"If we think about developing new audiences, we don't have to think about our budget because we are investing in the future," he says.

Chen Ping, former president of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, told the forum that for China, continued investments in the performing arts in Beijing and beyond, including a stage art complex in the Taihu area of the capital's Tongzhou district, as well as major performance venues across the country, is helping to take Chinese audiences into the modern era of theater.

"The arrival of Chinese theater is the result of the country's development ... it is the result of China's reform and opening-up ... it is also the result of the Party and the State attaching importance to the development of literature and art and attaching importance to the improvement of people's cultural life," Chen says, adding that culture forms the "soul" of a country and if it does not flourish there can be no "cultural self-confidence" and no "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

But along with building all the hardware also comes the need for talent to run and sustain it, ranging from directors and composers to production managers and stage technicians, he says.

"Nearly 100 universities across the country have established art management majors, but how many schools have established theater management majors? Talent is key," Chen says.

Teatro alla Scala's Pereira pushed for more partnerships between China and the rest of the world to better face these challenges.

"We have to think a little bit more about the great things we can do together ... You have to have the people to manage these opera houses, to create programs, to combine Chinese traditions with international traditions," he says.

"One of the things that our institutions with great traditions should do, is to create academies that can then train people from all over the world for the professions that the theaters need."

The efforts have to start with the music education of children, he says.

"They have to go into the main hall of the NCPA, these children, and they have to understand how beautiful and how important it is for the whole country."