Pierangelo Valtinoni is a contemporary Italian composer best-known, among other things, for his operas for children. The Snow Queen (La regina delle nevi), originally commissioned by the Komische Oper Berlin, was given its Asian debut (in English translation) at Hong Kong’s Shatin Town Hall 14-15 October.
Category Archive: Classical music
Oksana Dyka brought a powerful voice and stage presence to Opera Hong Kong’s new production of Puccini’s one full-length foray into melodrama which runs through 15 October at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.
The holiday week that starts October in China saw both “Immersive Comic Opera Week” and a recital of soprano Anna Netrebko at the Guangzhou Opera House.
Given the opera’s relative rarity, Musica Viva’s recent production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La finta giardiniera must surely have been a premiere of some sort.
Baritone Isaac Droscha and soprano Vicki Wu sang a selection of Sergei Rachmaninoff songs—including the well-known (and wordless) “Vocalise” and “Ne poi, krasavitsa, pri mne” with text from Pushkin—at a concert in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
On the work’s 150th anniversary, Jacques Offenbach’s Pomme d’Api premiered in an extended version at the Guangzhou Opera House on 30 June 2023 as part of the Festival Croisements.
A comic opera double consisting of the Hong Kong premiere of George’s Bizet’s Le docteur Miracle and a new production Gaetano Donizetti’s Rita was presented by Opera Hong Kong in cooperation with HKUST on 15 May 2023 association with the French May Arts Festival.
The winner of Musica Viva’s 2018 inaugural Hong Kong International Operatic Singing Competition, Norwegian soprano Margrethe Fredheim, joined third place and audience prize winner, Chinese soprano Chen Yibao, in a return concert 17 June 2023 headlined by renowned Korean soprano Sumi Jo, who had been one of the competition’s judges.
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 heroines for which she is best known.
Il trovatore, Opera Hong Kong’s second production of the year so far, opened with a star-studded cast featuring soprano Martina Serafin as Leonora, tenor Marco Berti as the troubadour Manrico, baritone Simone Piazzola as the villainous Conte di Luna and mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti as Azucena, all performing in a simple yet elegant revolving set.
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