Hong Kong music-theatre production The Diary challenges perceptions of classical music

Classical music – in particular, opera – is often perceived as an elitist, old-fashioned art form. Hong Kong’s Anima Ensemble is challenging this perception with The Diary. The original concept marries Dominick Argento’s one-act opera A Water Bird Talk and Leos Janacek’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared with contemporary dance, theatre and media art. Making opera an accessible experience is no easy task, but The Diary conductor and co-artistic director Vivian Ip Wing-wun believes that it can be achieved through innovation and the generation of new ideas. “Instead of everyone just sitting and playing on stage, we want to engage the musicians and connect with the audience in different layers and meanings,” she says. “We won’t be all in the pit, dressed in black. Our musicians are also actors and part of the drama.” In 2023, Ip co-founded Anima Ensemble with veteran concertmaster Nina Wong Sin-i. Their goal is to present “unconventional contemporary chamber operas, musicals and chamber music”. Links between two stories For The Diary, Ip and Wong saw “a huge contrast” between Argento and Janacek’s two works, but also a fascinating link: both are about love, relationships, desire and the fear of vulnerability. A Water Bird Talk, a one-act chamber opera monodrama, centres on a henpecked man as he gives a lecture about water birds but uses their habits as metaphors for his unhappy domestic life. The Diary of One Who Disappeared is a quasi-operatic song cycle following a young farmer who falls hopelessly in love with someone he cannot be with due to societal boundaries. The lecturer remains unhappy until the end, while the lovelorn farmer prioritises passion and flees his nest. “Through this contrast, we want to depict the different ways in which people are connected and how differently people love and make choices,” Ip says. “It’s not just about the characters. It’s connected to all of us, how we may sometimes struggle with ourselves and with situations.” The Diary’s director, Mo Lai Yan-chi, who won critical acclaim with her film-directing debut, Band Four, in 2023, points out a deeper connection between the two stories: the protagonists’ shared questioning of their identities. “I realised that it’s a journey. The first one is more trapped and somewhat depressing, and the second is about liberation or emancipation,” she says. “So, I used the metaphor of the bird from the first piece and made it fly over to the second piece and reappear as a metaphor for freedom.” To realise that idea, Lai proposed adding movement artist and contemporary dancer Alysa Leung Hoi-yee as the bird, who serves as a tangible thread that runs through the entire production. “The bird is one of the most ancient animals,” says Wong, who serves as The Diary’s concertmaster and is also a co-artistic director. “They were always the mailer figure, sending messages from the gods to humans. We found it very interesting that they are always observing what’s happening in the world.” Adding art The Diary is not Lai’s first time working with the Anima Ensemble. In 2024, she was invited by Ip and Wong to direct The Book of Longing, a musical theatre piece in which the musicians also acted on stage. For The Diary, Lai brought in local media arts collective Xceed for stage installation and visuals, which she says creates new poetic dimensions – “an immersive water world” and “an exotic forest wonderland” – within which the two classic stories merge and develop. “It’s to contradict between two perspectives of the same theme,” Lai says. “We’ll have the projection covering the whole theatre, and even the audience will be immersed in it. I hope this visual will create a world of imagination through surrealism.” This bold reimagining of old art forms harks back to Anima Ensemble’s mission to “show people that classical music is nothing like what they were told from centuries ago”, Wong says. “We want the audience to just experience it like going into a cinema – it’s that easy,” she says. “We want to really ‘shorten the distance’ with the audience … it’s not only about playing music in a concert hall, it’s more about creating an experience in a theatre.” “The Diary” by Anima Ensemble, Studio Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, May 1 and 2, 7.30pm. Standard tickets HK$380-HK$480. Visit animaensemble.org for more information.

Hong Kong music-theatre production The Diary challenges perceptions of classical music

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A new production aims to make classical music accessible and engaging by fusing opera, contemporary dance, theatre and media art

A new production aims to make classical music accessible and engaging by fusing opera, contemporary dance, theatre and media art