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.
Category Archive: Classical music
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 this Easter weekend production of an opera buffa double bill was the first there in several years.
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.
Ballet, which communicates visually and eschews words, is perhaps the antithesis of literature which does entirely the opposite. So how does one transform an eight-hundred page novel with a dozen important characters and several major plot lines into a two-hour staging using only movement and music? You might well ask.
It’s not often, if ever, that Hong Kong holds two opera world premieres in a single week; 2018 is off to a good start.
Nicholas Gordon talks to Neal Goren, music director for the world premier run of the chamber opera Mila at the Asia Society in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong can be a curious place. Ghost Love is a new Putonghua-language chamber opera, conceived and written locally, receiving what is—insofar as I can tell—its world premier this weekend, and yet, despite a number of attractive posters placed around town, there is hardly any mention of this in the press or online.
Rather than mounting a second production, Hong Kong’s newest opera company, “More than Musical”, decided to reprise La Traviata, first shown here in June. This was probably a wise decision, artistically and logistically; after all, due to the deliberately small size of the spaces that the company uses for intimacy, only a few hundred people—fewer in total than fit in even one of Hong Kong’s smaller traditional venues—saw it last time. The performances themselves benefited from what was in effect a longer run of six, rather than just three, outings.
Nicholas Gordon talks to Chinese operatic soprano Lei Xu, who is singing Violetta in More Than Musical’s production of La Traviata.
A selection of photos from Musica Viva’s “La Bohème”, December 2017.
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