Impressive debut for Xiqu Centre in West Kowloon Cultural District, Cantonese opera’s new Hong Kong home
- The Reincarnation of Red Plum was a fitting opening production for the complex, and starred veteran talents and a new generation of performers
- The audience gave a rousing welcome to its director, 90-year-old Pak Suet-sin, who played the female lead in the first performance of the opera in 1959
The opening production at the first major venue to be ready at Hong Kong’s new arts hub – the much delayed, publicly funded and over-budget West Kowloon Cultural District – needed to impress. That the venue concerned is the Xiqu Centre presented its own particular challenge.
It is a centre of Chinese opera, especially the local Cantonese variety, which some would say is the artistic equivalent of the durian fruit – a lot of people are crazy about it, many others avoid it like the plague.
The Reincarnation of Red Plum, directed by the venerable Pak Suet-sin, was a safe opening act, both for artistic and crowd-pleasing reasons.
This Cantonese opera classic is very much made in Hong Kong. Both the music and the libretto were written by the late Tong Tik-sang, whose short and prolific life ended abruptly when he died from a brain haemorrhage in the middle of its premiere 60 years ago, staged just around the corner from the Post’s present-day office at the old Lee Theatre in Causeway Bay.
The production staged at the centre’s 1,073-seat Grand Theatre from January 20 to 30 was adapted from a star-studded version performed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui in 2014. The 90-year-old Pak, who played the female lead in the 1959 premiere – accompanied by the late Yam Kim-fai – reprised her role as artistic director and supervised changes such as the speeding up of the transition between scenes.
Every night, as Pak made her way to her seat in the full house, the crowd erupted and she was mobbed by ecstatic selfie-seekers.