SOMETHING HAS BEEN bugging internationally renowned tenor Warren Mok ever since he arrived home to Hong Kong 10 yeas ago.
For a man who has spent much of his time since promoting western opera in Asia and China, he was constantly perplexed by the lack of an indigenous full-time company here. 'If Seoul has 15 opera companies, why should Hong Kong have none'' he thought.
During those years, the city has had to content itself with two major opera programmes in Hong Kong every year. One takes place during the Hong Kong Arts Festival, which begins in February, and usually includes one or two full-scale opera productions, with whole troupes and production sets hired from overseas. In addition, local producer and director Lo King-man also puts on one production each year with a mixture of international and local performers - this year it was Macbeth - for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD). Both take place at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's Grand Theatre.
It is a fairly poor diet for opera fans and Mok began asking others the question he kept asking himself. It was during one such conversation in February that prompted him to decide the answer lay with him. 'I was dining with a group of friends when I mentioned that Hong Kong should have its own opera company. Many of them encouraged me to found one.'
Inspired, Mok set about drumming up support and funds to form Opera Hong Kong (OHK) - the city's first professional opera company. 'I was raised in Hong Kong. It is where my roots are. Using my years of opera experience, I would like to do something for the Hong Kong arts scene,' he says.
By July he had achieved his initial goal: OHK was registered as a non-profit organisation, chaired by Moses Cheng, chairman of the Football Betting and Lotteries Commission. It boasts an illustrious cast of board members - such as surveyor Kan Fook-yee, the vice-chairman, honorary advisers including tycoon Sir Gordon Wu and ex-chief secretary Sir David Akers-Jones and artistic advisers as distinguished as composer Tan Dun and local soprano doyen Barbara Fei. Mok is artistic director.