Hong Kong group to strip down operas and bring them to the people
Works such as Verdi’s La Traviata to be condensed to length of a typical movie and staged in nightclubs and bars by a non-profit company set up by two opera fans hoping to broaden genre’s appeal
A new non-profit opera company in Hong Kong will soon be producing condensed versions of Western classical operas away from the formality of concert halls so that more people may be lured by the genre’s passion and music.
More Than Musical (MTM) is a local charity founded by Rumiko Hasegawa and Lucy Choi Ting-ting, two avid opera fans who are equally aware of the allure of full-scale opera productions and their drawbacks.
“Hong Kong people are so busy. They don’t want to invest three or four hours of their time to see an opera. People are also intimidated by the theatre setting and the foreign languages. They think they won’t understand opera,” says Hasegawa, who used to work as an investment banker in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
The reason we continue to do these great classics is that their essence transcends time and space
Muni says that operas tend to have simple plots, making it possible to shorten them to around 100 minutes and still be loyal to the original.