Even the idlest stroller will be awestruck by the beauty of Cairo’s City of the Dead. Yet this gem of 14th and 15th century architecture, a Unesco World Heritage site, leaves the visitor wondering about the sultans, beys and princesses for whom these elaborate monuments were built. Stones can tell stories, but objects bring the…
The recent documentary, The Sea is Our Home immerses viewers in the vibrant yet precarious world of the Bajau Laut, whose stilt houses rise above the turquoise waters of Sabah’s east coast. While this film is centered on the sea nomads of Malaysia, the Bajau Laut can also be found in aquatic settlements across coastal…
The Louvre Museum’s recent major exhibition on the Mamluk Sultanate explores the dynasty’s rich legacy in terms of the art and architecture of Egypt and Syria. The exhibition—a first for Europe—comes more than forty years after a touring exhibition in the United States curated by Dr Esin Atil. “Mamluks (1250-1517)” brings together 260 works from…
The new exhibit at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum is somewhat undersold by its title: “Wonders of Imperial Carpets”. There are indeed carpets—marvelous and quite extraordinary carpets—but the lesson of the exhibition—that of the two-way artistic and cultural influence between China and Islamic world—is mostly carried in the other exhibits, the bronzes, pottery, books, drawings and…
The star in Opera Hong Kong’s new production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s singspiel “The Magic Flute” is the staging. That is not to take anything away from the singing: Mexican tenor Andrés Moreno Garcia as Tamino, Americans John Chest and Sofia Troncoso (Papageno and Pamina) all sang credibly. Local soprano Rachel Kwok was a sparky…
The legacy of empire in Asian is palpable in Lisbon, from the images of Infant Jesus made in gold by Goan craftsmen, to the nambam lacquer screens depicting the exotic Portuguese merchants in Japan. Portugal exited Asia only in 1997 with the return of Macau to Chinese administration, but until now, Asian art in the…
Nánhǎi 南海, the South Sea, took on a new dimension for the Chinese after the capital Kaifeng fell to the Jurchen in 1127, precluding contacts north of the Yellow River. The retreating Southern Song dynasty (1127-1274) had to turn to the South China Sea, as it is now universally called, to provide a new outlet…
This being the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, operas from the popular Italian composer featured often in the list of operas performed in 2024 in Hong Kong and nearby.
Hong Kong rounded out the Puccini centenary year with Musica Viva’s new production of Il Trittico (“The Triptych”), a trio of one-act operas. Each is sufficient in itself, yet the whole magically becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Il tabarro (“The Cloak”) leads off with tragic melodrama, Suor Angelica is both spiritual and…
The recently-opened exhibition at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum, “The Origins of Chinese Civilisation”, has a serious purpose, but one suspects that most visitors focus on the objects, as well they might.
It perhaps takes the resources and curatorial talent of an institution the likes of the British Museum to remove the banality of an overused term like “The Silk Roads” (now obligatorily in the plural) and remind us what the fuss was all about.
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.
A “fairy-tale” family/children’s version of George Bizet’s opéra-comique Dr Miracle premiered at the Guangzhou Opera House on 30 September 2024 with six schedule performances.
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 influence of China on Japanese arts, culture and thought has been enormous. Yet, it varied widely across time. Periods of intense exposure and assimilation, as when the archipelago adopted Buddhism in the 6th century along with the logographic script that made its transmission possible, were often followed by decades, if not centuries, of distancing…