Ninth Hong Kong cinema to screen opera broadcasts from New York Met as audience reaches ‘critical mass’
City’s appetite for Western opera has evolved enormously, says head of the foundation behind screenings from Met, and the audience is younger than in many other places
The Asia Society’s Miller Theatre is to become the ninth Hong Kong venue to screen The Met: Live in HD broadcasts as local appetite for opera continues to grow, says its organiser.
New York’s Metropolitan Opera started beaming its high-definition telecasts to selected cinemas in 2006. They are now viewed either live or, as is necessary in Hong Kong, delayed, at more than 2,000 venues in 70 countries.
Laurence Scofield, chairman of the non-profit organisation Foundation for the Arts and Music in Asia (Fama), which is responsible for the Hong Kong screenings, says Western opera now has a growing following in the city.
“Hong Kong is at a point of critical mass,” he says.“For all the fine arts you need a certain educational standard and level of socio-economic development. Hong Kong is at that point. It has evolved enormously, I’d say, in the last generation. People are pretty sophisticated and looking for new cultural experiences.”
The Miller Theatre is the latest to be added to a cluster of screening venues that include The Grand at Elements, AMC Pacific Place, and Bethanie in Pok Fu Lam. Appropriately the theatre in Admiralty will be showing three works set in Asia – Bizet’s Les Pecheurs de Perles and Puccini’s Turandot and Madama Butterfly.