Who is live theater’s one-man answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? We’ll elect Basil Twist, consummate designer, builder, and operator of puppet spectaculars in no end of historic and original styles. China’s 16th-century adventure yarn Journey to the West provides just the imaginative canvas Twist was born to populate, and with the new opera The Monkey King he has his chance. With a libretto by the prize-winning Broadway playwright David Henry Hwang and music by Huang Ruo, wizard of poetic East-Western fusion, the prospects are auspicious. Kang Wang, widely acclaimed as Verdi’s Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto and Puccini’s Rodolfo in La Bohème, cuts loose as the eponymous trickster who just so happens to embody Buddhist life lessons in action. Konu Kim, another tenor of extensive Italianate credentials, steps out as the Jade Emperor, with the noted Mozartean soprano Mei Gui Zhang on hand as Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion. Diane Paulus, whose Broadway credits include Waitress and a Tony-winning revival of Pippin, directs. —Matthew Gurewitsch

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