Students have a feast for opera lovers
Print Edition
Watching opera performances can be costly, but a group from
Britain have come up with a strategy to help opera lovers spend less and enjoy more — selecting the best bits of classic operas and putting them in a single show.
A dozen young people from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama are to present “Opera Scenes” as part of the celebrations of the first Year of Cultural Exchanges between China and the UK.
“Opera Scenes” consists of classic scenes from around a dozen western operas, including Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” and “Don Giovanni,” Poulenc’s “Les mamelles de Tiresias,” Handel’s “Ariodante” and Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore.”
The show is set to make its Chinese debut at the Shanghai Grand Theatre on Friday.
“The project will give our young singers a wonderful opportunity to communicate their art to a new audience and we hope that this will be the start of a regular exchange of artistic projects including bringing some classical Chinese opera to London,” said Barry Ife, the school’s principal.
“The year of China-UK cultural exchange is an excellent opportunity to improve mutual understanding of each nation’s artistic and performing traditions, and to find ways of developing those art forms for new audiences in the 21st century,” he said.
In “Opera Scenes,” students on the school’s opera course will perform a range of excerpts in a workshop setting, allowing anyone new to the art form to get a taste of a variety of different operas, he said.
“‘Opera Scenes’ offers a nice cross-section of excerpts from the Western operatic tradition. They are presented in a studio environment and the audience is very close to the singers and the action. The effect is very powerful.”
Ife said there was a growing appetite for British theater in China, and “Opera Scenes” aimed to provide a more immersive experience for Chinese opera-goers.
“Immersive theater brings the actors and the audience into close proximity and is usually staged in non-traditional venues where it is easier to break down the barriers between the stage and the auditorium,” he said.
He said the school would be announcing further collaborations with Chinese institutions later this year.
“We are planning a number of residencies in which practitioners can learn about how the arts are developed and managed in each of our two countries,” he said.
Tickets to “Opera Scenes” are on sale now at 80 yuan (US$12.8).
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
