SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Italian Senator Urges Opera House to Host Shen Yun

Jul 07, 2025

7/7/2025Updated: 7/9/2025

In February, Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera welcomed the world-renowned Shen Yun Performing Arts for the first time in seven years, and Italian Senator Cinzia Pellegrino on July 7 urged the storied theater to host the artists again next year.

“I want to make a specific appeal to the Opera House in Rome to grant again this year the opportunity for the practitioners and organization of the beautiful show Shen Yun to be able to perform it once again in Rome,” Pellegrino told The Epoch Times in Italy.

The senator applauded the artists and the values they represent, saying they reflected what Italians also want to support.

“In addition to artistic beauty, this show represents perfectly the principles of democracy and protection, especially of human rights that we want to export, and that we want to make sustainable within our territory,” Pellegrino said.

New York-based Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company.

It was founded in the United States in 2006 by artists from around the world in pursuit of artistic freedom and has since grown to encompass eight touring groups. Today, the arts company tours the world across five continents, performing for approximately 1 million audience members each season.

With a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through the arts, Shen Yun has taken Europe by storm in recent years. The 2024–2025 season sold out months in advance at many venues. In France, tickets sold at a rate of 2,000 per day, and performances lasted an entire month.

Shen Yun Returns to Rome

Shen Yun’s return to Rome was met with great fanfare, and Italian dignitaries hosted the artists with a reception and a tour of the historic Senate Chamber.

Senator Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, president of the Senate’s EU Affairs Committee and former Italian Foreign Minister, said Shen Yun represented a remarkable success in cultural diplomacy.

“This is something truly extraordinary,” he told the artists during the Jan. 31 reception. “You represent beauty, you represent the divinity of the human being, and dance is the perfect expression of all this.”

Shen Yun artists practice Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline based on the three principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance, which has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Among the artists are some who escaped the regime’s brutal persecution in China, who warn that the regime is now exporting its persecution overseas in what human rights experts call transnational repression.

Shen Yun says threats against their members have escalated in recent years, as seen with the bomb threat hoax made at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington earlier this year. Show presenters around the world have also documented cases of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pressuring theaters to cancel Shen Yun shows.

Terzi had described Falun Gong as “a movement of peace, truth, freedom—an elevation of character and a search for the inner spirit, the inner dimension of the human being” and expressed his support for the artists’ mission.

He said that Shen Yun has received widespread recognition in the free world, and expressed regret at the Chinese communist regime’s attempts to block the performances.

Terzi said that Shen Yun’s story represents “a China that has not bowed to the flattening of communist ideology,” as the regime continues its attempts to erase tradition.

“What your company brings to us is a reality of beauty—a beauty that cannot be stopped,” he told the artists.

Pellegrino had also welcomed the artists to Rome, expressing support for Shen Yun’s art and the stand for human rights the artists represent.

Rome City Councilor Federico Rocca presented the artists with a medal on behalf of the City of Rome on opening night.

“We need performances like this. Shen Yun brings positive energy, hope, and the ideal of peaceful coexistence. I believe this show is beneficial for the world today because, from my perspective, our society has become materialistic,” he said.