Peacock Cantonese Opera Association was started in September of last year and is the first of its kind in the Silicon Valley. While there are a few Chinese opera groups in San Francisco and the East Bay, the Sunnyvale center claims to bring in something that the other schools don't: authenticity and professionalism in the form of its master teacher, Xiaobo "Paul" Ho.

Ho, 40, is a professional Cantonese opera star who migrated from China three years ago. He was the lead actor with a prominent Cantonese opera troupe there and has performed in several stage productions around the world, including ones in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

Opera is a major part of the Chinese social and cultural experience. The stories that unfold in these musicals talk about historical events and heroic deeds that are more than 3000 years old. It is a vibrant folk tradition that reveals the stories of long-ago dynasties such as the Mings and the Chings through mostly fictional love stories.

Chinese opera language is as varied as the dialects spoken in the country. While Mandarin is the common unifying language of China, Cantonese is the language of Southern China where Ho grew up in Zhan Jiangh. And the opera from this region comes loaded with all the elements of drama--heroes and villains, love and destruction, war and peace. It's an art form that children in China grow up watching and learning, Ho explains with the help of a translator. Ho, who speaks very little English, believes that despite a huge Chinese-American presence in the Silicon Valley, Chinese opera has become a dying art form here.

"The lifestyle of the immigrant population is very different from what they are used to in their native countries," says Ho. "In China even the extended family is an important part of our lives. But here everything is very private and they do not have any cultural activities. And even if they do, it is very westernized. The current generation is not exposed to much of this culture, and most immigrants miss their native cultural experiences and want to strike a balance." This is the reason he gives for starting a Cantonese opera troupe. "We want to tell people that we are here, and we want to bring their culture to them," he says.

Jennifer Lam is the director of Peacock Cantonese Opera Association and runs the organization. "Other centers in the Bay Area have either musicians or dancers teaching opera. There is no professional opera artist like Paul who brings in years of theater experience. And at 40, he is the youngest teacher around," she says. In Chinese opera, the age of an instructor plays an important role, as this style involves extreme acrobatic skills that can become difficult to perform with age, says Lam. Certain characters in these musicals have to wield swords and spears and must be agile enough to perform war scenes.

Ho began his opera training when he was just 8 years old. "As a child the body is nimble enough to learn various acrobatic skills. We would wake up every day at 5 in the morning and go through vigorous training for voice, posturing and even kung fu," says Ho. Today, at the Peacock center, he teaches some of the very skills he learned as a young boy, such as voice training, opera makeup and stage weaponry that he spent years perfecting.

Makeup is an elaborate procedure in Chinese opera. Characters often paint their faces with a base coat of white and then decorate them with layers of red and black designs, depending on their role. "It takes a male character at least a half-hour to complete the face makeup alone. For a female character, it can sometimes take more than an hour to do the face and hair, as certain headgears are extremely complicated and involve putting on many small accent pieces on the hair," says Lam.

If makeup is elaborate, costumes used in Chinese opera are more so. They are rich, vibrant in colors and are made from silk brocades and embroidered materials. Lillian Pang, who rents out the place for the opera classes at her residence, says that it was the rich costumes that drew her to Cantonese opera when she was a little girl growing up in Hawaii. "I grew up learning to talk Cantonese and being exposed to Cantonese opera. My mother used to take me to these shows, as a little child, and I remember being fascinated by the beautiful costumes the actors would wear onstage."

However, over the years, Pang says, she lost touch with her culture, especially after moving to California. "Once I started working, I almost completely lost touch with my language. But now I'm happy to have Paul conduct these classes at my home. This way I'm enjoying a facet of my life that gave me great pleasure as a child, and at the same time, I'm reacquainting myself with my language and culture," she says.

"Variety," Ho says, "is the essence of Chinese opera. Sometimes actors have to play different roles in the same play. And at times men play even women's roles," he says. "That's because long ago women were not allowed to act in China, so men ended up playing the parts of female characters. But today if there are no female actors to play a particular role, male actors still do that."

Demonstrating some of the techniques he teaches his students, Ho dons a luxurious aquamarine blue silk robe adorned with gold, orange and green silk thread designs. He first pretended to be a warrior riding a horse, belting out Cantonese lyrics in his baritone voice. Once the song is over, the soldier jumps off his horse to the ground, waves his golden "stage" sword and then wields a two-sided spear like a swashbuckling Zorro. Minutes later he is a sedate scholar gently weaving his hands and singing a soft musical number at the court of a king.

Ho currently trains approximately 20 students at the Sunnyvale center in various aspects of Cantonese opera. He also holds a weekly class at the Chinese American Mutual Assistance Association in San Jose. Though his students have been singing opera-style at various Chinese events over the past few months, the troupe will perform its first major theatrical production June 26 at the Good Samaritan United Methodist Church. The show will feature vignettes of various opera pieces.

Cupertino resident Pinky Lee is a student of Ho and will play the role of a man in the upcoming show. Lee, who recently retired from the high-tech industry after 23 years at Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies, says that learning opera had been a dream she did not have time for until now. "Working full time, I did not have the opportunity to learn this art form that I enjoyed as a child."

Lee migrated from Hong Kong at the age of 10 and says that when she was growing up in San Francisco, she enjoyed watching movies of Chinese opera in theaters. "You tend to learn a lot about Chinese culture from the historical fairy tales that are told in these operas. But more than anything else, I feel it gives me a chance to get back to my Chinese heritage. Having been in this country for so long and working for so long, I have become very Americanized, and this is one way of getting back to my roots," she says.

On a more personal front, Lee says that her opera experience has given her a morale makeover. "With Paul choreographing every minute aspect of song and movement, I have a lot more self-confidence in my stage abilities these days. I'm much better than I thought I was," she says.

For more information about the Peacock Cantonese Opera Association, go to www.peacockopera.com or call 408.739.5004.