The Korea National Opera presents the original opera in 2025. This piece adapts the popular play ‘Hwajeonga’ by Bae Sam-sik, a writer renowned for his box-office success in theater. Set in April 1950, just before the outbreak of the Korean War, it tells the story of women who, amidst a world on the brink of destruction, recreate a fleeting moment of beauty through the tradition of flower picnics (hwajeon-nori). An Hoon Song, the first Asian maestro appointed as Chief Conductor of the Osnabrück Municipal Theatre in Germany, leads the music. Director Jung Young-du, a dancer and choreographer who has bridged the gap between modern and traditional art in musical theater productions like and , takes on his first opera direction.​

In April 1950, as flowers bloom across the mountains, warmth fills a household in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, where nine women have gathered for Mrs. Kim’s 60th birthday. Three daughters, two daughters-in-law, an aunt, an elderly housekeeper, and Hongdaridaek—a woman she took in and raised—bring the house to life. Instead of a grand banquet, Mrs. Kim suggests a hwajeon-nori, a flower picnic making blossom-topped pancakes. That night, the women, who have endured hard lives, talk late into the evening, not pitying or judging each other but standing as pillars of strength for each other to lean on.