Photo from vbm Ralf Brinkhoft Birgit Mogenburg.

Roberta Valentini, 33, from Nuremberg, Bavaria, will be the fifth actress to take the leading role.

"We grew up with Sissi," Valentini tells the media. She has recently arrived in Shanghai to begin rehearsals. Sisi herself was from Bavaria, where she is well-known. Valentini has seen the movies and learned about the empress at school.

Sissi is famous for always having been true to herself. Even as the empress, she refused to change her ways to please others.

Elisabeth did, however, live a troubled life. She had an interfering mother-in-law, suffered ill health and her only son died. It seemed she lived on the edge of death.

In the musical, Death is the leading male character, and Elisabeth's love interest. When she pursues her wish to die, Death turns her down because she is not supposed to take the easy way out.

Elisabeth was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist on a trip to Geneva in 1898. She had served 44 years, longer than anyone else, as the Empress-consort of Austria.

Empress Elisabeth's struggles from the "golden cage" of the royal court may not be relevant to everyone in the 21st century, but "everybody has been through a phase when you don't know what to do, and you lose your power," Valentini says. This courage to meet the challenges, and find the strength to continue to live a life, is universal. For Sissi, the source of this strength is love: love for her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph, and later her children.

Valentini was part of the B cast for a production of Elisabeth in 2006, when she was fresh out of university. "I always wanted to play it again when I had more experience," she says. To present Elisabeth in Shanghai is, for her, a dream come true.

Valentini has had rich experience in musical theater, singing in German, French and English. She believes that by singing in her mother tongue, she will better express the character.

The biggest challenge is the costumes, which stay true to the royal court of the 19th century. Even in rehearsals, Valentini wears a corset and a huge skirt so she can become accustomed to the heavy clothes.

To depict Elisabeth from age 16 to somewhere in her 60s, Valentini will change wigs seven times, and wear dresses weighing up to six kilograms.

IF YOU GO

Elisabeth: the Legend of Sisi

(in German with English and Chinese subtitles)

7:15 pm, Tue-Sun, Dec 9-Jan 11; 2 pm, Sat-Sun

Shanghai Culture Square, 597 Fuxing Road Middle, Xuhui district, 021-962388

復興中路597號，文化廣場

80-1180 yuan