Opera Hong Kong’s Turandot, the classic story of a Chinese ice princess melted by implacable love, debuted in a new atmospheric production by well-known Chinese Director Jia Ding at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on 10 October 2024.
Opera Hong Kong chose Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail for its annual summer semi-staged production at the Hong Kong City Hall, held 17-18 August 2025. The production, directed by Tang Xinxin and conducted by Michael Koehler, was sung in German with dialogue in English (and a large smattering of Chinese).
The first half of May was been a busy fortnight for opera in the Greater Bay Area. The renowned Chinese soprano He Hui sang her first Wagner role, Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, at the Guangzhou Opera House on 5 and 7 May, a dramatic move (literally and figuratively) away from the Verdi and Puccini…
Written when the composer was just 12, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La Finta Semplice qualifies as a real rarity. After a performance the year following its composition, it dropped from the repertoire and was not staged again until modern times. That Musica Viva’s recent production at Hong Kong’s City Hall was a premiere seems beyond doubt,…
Musica Viva’s new production of Norma—Vincenzo Bellini at his bel canto best—is perhaps an omen: it is just one letter shy of “normal”.
In a series of matinees ending today, Hong Kong’s Musica Viva presented George Bizet’s Carmen to audiences of secondary school students for whom this was the likely the first (Western) opera performance most had ever attended.
If there is any work that typifies “Viennese operetta”—waltzes, romantic comedy, catchy tunes and a certain silliness—it is Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow.
Opera plots can often strain credulity; Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, on the other hand, cuts close to the bone. The story—of an American naval officer who woos, marries and deserts a young Japanese girl—matters: it is a tightly-constructed narrative and attempts to reframe it, reposition it in another time or place, can be fraught.