Janet Steele’s new book is a deep dive into five leading Malaysian and Indonesian news publications: Tempo, Malaysiakini, Harakah, Republika and Sabili.
Author: Peter Gordon
Baroque vocal recitals are not that rare, even in Kong Kong, but to have two almost back-to-back—Magdalena Kožená followed by the perhaps not-as-widely-known but nevertheless entirely enthralling “La Galanía” ensemble only 48-hours later—is a one-in-a-blue-moon set of events. The latter played a (will wonders never cease?) free concert of 17th-century Spanish and Italian love songs at the University of Hong Kong’s Grand Hall.
Might Hamid Ismailov’s The Devils’ Dance open Central Asian literature to the world as Gabriel García Márquez’s novels did for Latin America? Probably not—things rarely work out like that—but perhaps it deserves to.
The Teatro Dom Pedro V is a gem. Built in 1860, it both looks like and is a traditional theatre, with gold-fluted columns, plaster molding and orchestra pit. It is, for better or worse (and in many ways better), small with fewer than 300 seats. One can hardly think of a more idyllic place in which to perform opera, yet Solomusica’s production of an opera buffa double bill over Easter weekend was the first there in several years.
It is worth periodically remembering—as the tsunami of news of China’s momentous economic and political developments rushes past—that China has not always been “Chinese” in the quite the way it is, or can be presented to be, today.
Not all operas or performances are about the singers. The star of the Welsh National Opera’s performance of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Hong Kong Arts Festival was its orchestra and conductor Lothar Koenigs who did Claude Debussy’s seamless score proud.
The Script Road—otherwise known as the Macau Literary Festival—has long if not always included performances as well as traditional book talks. One of these, performed on 14 March 2018, is the multimedia theatrical “My Macau”, by Portuguese visual artist António-Pedro, which combines live theatre (or at least monologue) with video and live music (mostly eclectic percussion with some keyboard).