Hong Kong’s musical achievements deserve an ovation as it seeks to carve out a leading role on the world’s stages
Peter Gordon says the international accomplishments of local musicians and the success of the inaugural operatic singing competition show the city is hitting the right notes
Hong Kong, and indeed China, may not be in the 2018 World Cup, but we have in the past few weeks been scoring goals on different pitches.
Kwong’s path to the Roman stage shows what a special achievement this is. Earlier this year, she was admitted to Fabbrica, the Young Artist programme of the Rome Opera. It admitted 15 of some 900 applicants – giving it an acceptance rate lower than Harvard University – of which just eight are singers. Kwong is not only the first Hong Kong artist to enter the programme since its founding in 2016, but also the first from China and from East Asia.
Kwong will see further action with Rome Opera as Micaëla in Carmen in July. In 2019, she is due to sing, among other things, the role of the spurned lover Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Opera doesn’t have a “World Cup”. It’s more like tennis in that there are a number of annual tournaments. This weekend saw the inaugural Hong Kong International Operatic Singing Competition, the first such contest here and maybe the first in this part of the world; with a US$15,000 first prize, it is one of the richest.
At a gala concert for the 10 finalists on Monday evening, the Hong Kong audience was treated to a bevy of singers they would otherwise have never heard – as well as a palpable frisson of excitement and anticipation from it being a competitive event.
Norwegian soprano Margrethe Fredheim won first prize with second and third prizes going to Danish mezzo-soprano Johanne Højlund and Chinese soprano Chen Yibao, who also picked up the audience prize.
While both productions and competitions bring singers to Hong Kong, who then return home as operatic ambassadors, competitions bring a couple of dozen rather than just a handful. The two dozen semi-finalists who competed here, selected from 148 entries from 23 countries, included singers from Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Russia, Scandinavia, the US, Britain and South Africa.
The competition jury was chaired by the renowned Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, backed by one of Asia’s leading sopranos, Korea’s Sumi Jo, and three other international opera notables, including the formidable Lo King-man, whose project this was. Lo further roped in the Rome Opera, Fabbrica and the Elena Obraztsova Cultural Centre in St Petersburg, Russia, as international advisers to the competition. Connections make the world go around, in the arts as everything else.
The competitors could not have asked for a conductor more sensitively attuned to their situation. That was the image that remains: Hong Kong in the centre, nurturing an international arts event.
Louise Kwong can provide an inspirational role model for even younger Hong Kong singers, Lio Kuok-man sets a standard for other musicians to aspire to and the international competition makes Hong Kong a net contributor to the development of opera globally.
Goals are being scored. But what we need now is some cheering.
Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books