How to stage a full-scale opera without putting on a song and dance
Traditional, professional, fully-staged opera - with its intricate sets, period costuming, chorus, orchestra and corps de ballet - is the most visually and musically striking of classical arts. But it takes millions of Hong Kong dollars, plus hundreds of highly trained specialists, to pull off such a spectacle properly.
It's not a forgiving genre, either. Because of opera's extravagant nature, badly staged productions can be silly. Imagine bellowing amateur singers in Viking helmets; or strangely dressed dancers, players and a chorus jostling for space on a stage that's too small - as occurred at last year's performance of Samson and Delilah.
A sophisticated city such as Hong Kong should be able to offer audiences some form of opera. But Hong Kong has little history of performing western opera, no dedicated opera hall and no full-time professional opera company. Even the city's two main opera promoters can afford only an average of two productions a year - and only when they can secure outside funding and appearances from overseas performers.
This is why Edo de Waart, an internationally known opera promoter and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra's (HKPO) outspoken, new musical director, is going in the direction of many European groups. He's offering a compromise in the form of an annual 'opera in concert' series, the first in the HKPO's history. It begins this Thursday with a three-night run of Richard Strauss' Salome, which is based on an Oscar Wilde play that, in turn, is based on a sexually charged Biblical tale.
In the opera in concert form, the performance involves a full orchestra and a cast of soloists, but without any of the expensive visual add-ons such as sets, lights, dancers, costumes, wigs and makeup.
'Opera in concert is the second-best thing to a full opera,' says de Waart. 'And it's much better than second-rate opera, in which all the visual distractions sometimes bury the music instead of complementing it. We don't have the money to do a full production, with a full cast rehearsing for five weeks. So, it's better to do a simpler production well, instead of a full production not well.'