Promotional material for True Romance: Butterfly Lovers Photo: Courtesy of Wang Chang

It has been 60 years since China's well-known Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto debuted in Shanghai. Now a new musical inspired by the romantic Chinese legend, True Romance: Butterfly Lovers, will be staged at the end of this year in Shanghai and Beijing. 

According to its director Xu Jun, the musical will feature four mini-love stories that take place in ancient and modern China including one based on the real life long-distance relationship between Fan Jingshi, who spent decades carrying out cultural research in remote Dunhuang in Northwest China's Gansu Province, and her husband Peng Jinzhang. 

As a performer of the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto, Yu Lina said that the popularity of the music work is largely due to how it interprets the ancient Chinese love story The Butterfly Lovers using the rhythms of violin. 

The Butterfly Lovers is the tragic love story of Zhu Yingtai, who dresses as a man and studies with the talented Liang Shanbo, who doesn't know her real identity. The two fall in love, but Zhu's father objects to their romance. In the end, the two die from heartbreak and become a pair of butterflies.