Anna Bolena (1830) is the first of Gaetano’s Donizetti’s trio of Tudor operas, with Maria Stuarda (produced by Musica Viva in 2022) and Roberto Devereux following later in the decade. Like much of bel canto that went into relative eclipse with the rise of verismo late in the 19th century, Anna Bolena was rarely performed in the first half of the 20th century, and while today it is back in the standard repertoire, it is close enough to the edges to amount to a bold choice for a Hong Kong opera company.
Category Archive: Opera
Although originally conceived as an oratorio, Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah (1846) has in recent years been staged, on occasion at any rate, as an opera. Last night’s semi-staged performance by The Bel Canto Singers showed why: whatever the libretto may lack in theatricality is made up for by the drama in the music, sung by operatically-sized cast of a dozen named characters and a large chorus.
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.
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.
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.