When Meigui Zhang was a girl, her parents did not want her to follow in their footsteps as musicians. Instead, they wanted her to excel in her Chinese, English, geography and math studies in hopes she could one day become an ambassador.

张先生有不同的计划。13岁时,她坠入爱河with a set of Maria Callas’ recordings and decided she wanted to become an opera singer. Her parents were skeptical but supportive and decided she could major in piano in a secondary school affiliated with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music. Her dad, a lyric tenor, would teach her voice lessons at home.

At the time, Zhang recalls being upset — all she wanted to do was sing. Now, at 28, she realizes her piano background has given her a musical foundation upon which she’s built a blossoming opera career.

“Before, I couldn’t understand,” she said. “Now I feel very opposite. … I feel very grateful for their decision.”

Since graduating from Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Mannes School of Music in New York, Zhang has attended the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, where she made her Met Opera debut as the Bloody Child in “Macbeth,” and the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, where she made her local debut as Anne Trulove in 2018’s “The Rake’s Progress.”

Beginning Tuesday, June 14, Zhang will take on the role of Dai Yu in the San Francisco Opera’s seven-performance revival of “Dream of the Red Chamber.” The opera, adapted from Cao Xueqin’s 18th century novel of the same name by Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang, tells the story of the ill-fated relationship between Dai Yu and Bao Yu, heir to the declining Jia family. The family, in an attempt to save itself, secretly plots to marry Bao Yu to Bao Chai, who belongs to the more powerful Xue family.

As the daughter of a traditional Chinese folk singer and a classically trained tenor, Zhang’s background makes her well-suited for delivering her character to a Western audience. (Dai Yu, in fact, has been Zhang’s favorite character since she first watched the story in cartoon form at age 5.)

Sheng’s music similarly marries cultural influences of East and West.

Sheng “is one of those composers that successfully combines the Western European musical idiom with Chinese musical idioms,” said Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang, who will make his San Francisco Opera debut with this production. “At the same time, he’s one of those rare composers that actually manages to find common ground with performers and listeners alike.”

The opera, first performed in 2016, was a box office success and convinced San Francisco Opera that it merited another run — a first in company history for one of its own commissions. The production will again feature an all-Asian cast, a condition Hwang insisted on including in the opera’s contract, according to director Stan Lai.

“I think this (cast) will open up people’s eyes,” Lai said. “To me that’s like a secret. … The world doesn’t know that there’s so many talented Asian opera singers.”

Lai added that during the early 2000s, while he was directing Mozart’s operas in Taipei, he would listen to European recordings of the same opera on his commutes home and think to himself that there was “no contest” — the Asian singers he worked with sounded “even better.”

With roughly half the cast new, there is ample room for rising singers of Asian descent to shine in leading roles, a rarity in an industry where Asians have been continually underrepresented, both in casting and in the stories told onstage. Alongside Zhang, Korean tenor Konu Kim, 37, will play Bao Yu, and Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu, 28, will play Bao Chai. Both will be making their San Francisco Opera debuts.

The opera world has been slow to change. Seldom are the cultures and experiences of nonwhite people portrayed in non-stereotypical ways within the operatic canon. “Dream of the Red Chamber,” though, uses the Western art form to deliver a story central to Chinese culture. Its Asian cast performs in ornate period costumes created by Academy Award-winning “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” production designer Tim Yip. When “Red Chamber” premiered six years ago, it was the first time San Francisco Opera featured bilingual supertitles in both English and Chinese.

Conductor Ang said he believes Sheng and Hwang’s opera to be “one of the great operatic masterpieces of the 21st century” because it simultaneously explores universal themes of love, loyalty and friendship as well as the intricate nuances of Chinese society during the Qing dynasty.

“For example, here in the West … you are expected to be respectful to everybody, but at the same time, a certain degree of openness, friendliness, familiarity and honesty is appreciated,” Ang said. “In Chinese culture, and even in Japanese and Korean cultures, some of that openness and honesty is not as appreciated by elders.”

Unspoken rules, such as not speaking unless you’re spoken to, are familiar to those who come from an Asian cultural background, explained Ang, whose ancestry is Chinese. Having a fully Asian cast, he added, has meant there is a common understanding of cultural nuances that need to be highlighted onstage.

潜在的生产是一个unapologet的感觉ic pride in being able to display Asian culture and identity through a historically Western art form.

“It’s about time that the arts in Asia are being recognized more in the West,” Lai said.

Lai hopes this opera, which has already been performed in parts of China, will “travel the other direction” and make more appearances in the United States and beyond.

“I feel so proud of this cast because we’re able to let people know (about) one of our most famous Chinese stories … in opera. This is not common,” said Wu.

Wu, who has known Kim and Zhang for years but is now only working alongside them in this production, noted that the experience has been wonderful.

Ang agrees.

“They’re the best cast of any opera ever assembled,” he said. “It’s just a dream.”

“Dream of the Red Chamber”:San Francisco Opera. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, Friday, June 17, June 23 and 25, and July 1; 2 p.m. Sunday, June 19, and July 3. $26-$408. War Memorial House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-3330.www.sfopera.com