2008 marked the Opera Society of Hong Kong’s first encounter with Le French May in the production of Offenbach’s La Périchole. The fantastic experience has left indelible memories with many of our singers. It has sparked our opera passion and inspired us to nurture the young talents since then.
In “Opera Fever 4EVER,” the Opera Society of Hong Kong presents a charity concert and opera education program to showcase our passionate singers and young professionals. The opera repertoire is rich and fiery – singers of opera could hardly quench their fever of singing by singing more. In this concert, the Opera Society of Hong Kong will highlight favorite French operatic arias and excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen and Les pêcheurs de perles, Delibes’ Lakmé, and more.

Some say music should be a duet and it certainly applies to the French jazz pianist Baptiste Trotignon and the Argentinian percussionist Minino Garay. Trotignon had his first two albums “Fluide” and “Sightseeing” brought to world’s attention when he was 26, followed by winning various awards along the years – a Django d’Or, the Prix Django Reinhardt de l’Académie du Jazz, Best French Newcomer at the 2003 Victoires du Jazz – plus the Grand Prix at the 2002 Martial Solal International Jazz Piano Competition. Trotignon developed a number of eclectic encounters, but not until he met and toured with Paris-based Argentinian Minino Garay in 2011, did the sparks spill onto the jazz stage. Garay defies all categories: not only a drummer, nor a percussionist, he is able to incorporate Latin rhythms into jazz where he blossomed and collaborated with great artists such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Jacky Terrasson. Now the duet will bring to Hong Kong a purely acoustic repertoire spanning from ballad to jazz and Argentinian tango.

Trio Morisot was founded by pianist Evelyn Chang in 2014. Together with violinist Euna Kim and cellist Zhu Mu, they bring together a programme celebrating the art of French Music with a flare of the orient. Programme includes Piano Trio No.1 by Dubois, a spontaneously energetic work beautifully crafted with the French Romantic tradition. ‘Snowy Landscape’ by Hong Kong’s own talent, Joyce Tang; commissioned by the trio, based on Tang’s inspiration from Berthe Morisot’s painting, echoing the name Trio Morisot. The evening ends with Ravel’s Piano Trio, a major work in the 20th century. The master work is unique in its sensuality, luxuriance of colour and brilliance.

Les Six: The Enfant Terribles of the Inter-War Years
In a series of concerts hosted by the French soprano Jane Bathori in 1917, a group of six protégés of Erik Satie began to make their names in the Parisian circle. The individual composers, who were branded as ‘Nouveaux Jeunes’ by their mentor (bon maître as they called him), came from a diverse background.

Georges Auric and Germaine Tailleferre were child prodigies who had shown excellent potential in a career in music. Darius Milhaud, coming from a Jewish family was a violinist turned composer. Arthur Honegger, born to Swiss émigré parents was also a violinist who found his true calling in composition. The four met in 1913 in Georges Caussade’s counterpoint class at the Paris Conservatoire, and forged a lifelong bond in music and in life. The remaining two were Louis Durey and Francis Poulenc, the eldest and youngest of the group. These two were largely self-taught composers and they were complete opposite to one and other – Poulenc being the extrovert and Durey the introvert, yet they shared the same sense of duty in politics.

Through Satie’s connection, the six composers were exposed to the avant-garde ‘glitterati’, spending their time in the company of up-and-coming pianists, singers, painters and writers of Paris. Among them, the aesthete-socialite Jean Cocteau took a special interest in the group. Cocteau was outspoken about his reaction against the overripe German Romanticism and the vagueness of Debussy’s style. Noting a similar enthusiasm in ‘breaking the rules’ among his entourage, Cocteau become the self-appointed spokesman of the six composers. The group was officially christened as Les Six by the art critic Henri Collet in a concert review on January 16, 1920.

Nevertheless, the group was rather short-lived. Or to put it more precisely, it had doomed before it even bloomed. After their only collaboration in 1919, Durey withdrew from the group because of mounting tension from temperamental and artistic differences with Cocteau. Honegger was the next to leave the group, despite his initial appreciation of Cocteau’s ideas. The onset of WWII further divided the remaining members: Milhaud fled to the United States and taught at Mills College. Tailleferre also escaped to the east coast of America only to return in 1946, by which time Les Six was something of a bygone era.

Despite the many changes, the composers themselves maintained their bonds, finding support and solace in each other in times of crises. Tonight’s programme is a celebration of the diversity of the six composers, featuring three genres that they had all composed for: piano works, French melodies and the trio d’aches.

Programme
L’Album Le Six (1920)

Georges Auric: Prélude
Durey: Romance sans paroles, Op. 21
Honegger: Sarabande
Milhaud: Mazurka
Poulenc: Valse
Tailleferre: Pastorale

Romantic opera at its best
Opera in five acts, by Charles Gounod
Words by Barbier and Carrè, after the tragedy by Shakespeare.

Romeo and Juliet fall passionately in love, but their families are sworn enemies. The lovers marry in secret before Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin Tybalt in a fight and is banished from the city.

Juliet’s family arrange for her to marry Court Paris. To escape, Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear lifeless. Romeo does not receive the message explaining her plan; thinking her dead, he goes to her tomb and kills himself. She wakes, sees Romeo’s corpse and stabs herself.

Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet), one of the world’s most celebrated love stories, is staged through Gounod’s romantic music. Roméo et Juliette is representative of Gounod’s operas. It is also one of the most successful adaptations of the Shakespeare tragedy.

This production of Roméo et Juliette performed at Le French May Art Festival 2016 is directed by French director and designer Arnaud Bernard, and performed by successful young French opera singers Vannina Santoni, soprano, who sings Juliette, and Sébastien Guèze, tenor, singing Roméo, along with other international and local talents, and Opera Hong Kong Chorus. French maestro conductor Benjamin Pionnier will lead Fujian Symphony Orchestra to provide accompaniment to Gounod’s score.

The opera in five acts is sung to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. The tender intimacy and intense emotions are personified unprecedentedly then through four iconic love duets for soprano and tenor and powerful music for the chorus and orchestra.

The essence of communication: a union of music, dance, and theatre

Renkonti is an artistic performance consisting in three arts: music, acrobatic dance and object theatre. Three modes of expression, three experiments, three cultures for one purpose: communication in emotion or communication with emotion.

Renkonti is a succession of visual and sound poetic sketches based on primitive emotion, without words, only encounter, communication and miscommunication.

Like cabarets or circus the sketches keep going. Each scene is interdependent but has its own story: A puppet, fascinated by the moon, is using the dancer’s body as a ladder. A large shining character is manipulating the puppet’s body and gives it life. After a large battle with small rags, a strange man embarrassed by his huge legs, is asking a dancer to teach him dance. A dancer is winning a paper silhouette by a languorous tango. The final is ending with numerous dances and percussion sounds.

Renkonti is an exploration of communication without speech, but with musical art, body expression and manipulation of objects.

The transformative power of French ballet

Thierry Malandain’s Beauty and the Beast is a neoclassical ballet with a rather intellectual interpretation. Filled with symbolisms, this love story about two people who are opposites in every way is a rich source of inspiration. Based on Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film adaption, Malandain tells a rite of passage story aimed at resolving the duality of humanity: Beauty, representing the soul; and the Beast, the vital force and instincts. Elegant and fluent, his vision and Tchaikovsky’s music work together to bring to life a heartwarming fairytale, where dreams come true and love’s transformative powers are celebrated. The encounters between Belle and the Beast are the heart of the story, culminating in the ending when the Beast turns into a prince and the castle becomes bright. The courtly costumes, the Beast in a gauze mask and performance of the Malandain Ballet Biarritz all add to the visual magic of this beautiful work.

Revival of Cinderella for the contemporary stage

The story of Cinderella has a place in the collective human psyche. A downtrodden maiden, helped by her fairy godmother, strives to find love and fulfil her dream while sending her oppressors to a bitter end. The story, filled with symbolisms, has been retold countless times on stage including numerous ballet productions. A fresh perspective is always going to be a challenge for any contemporary choreographer trying to revive this old tale. Thierry Malandain has managed to do so by developing a very personal approach, and yet remained faithful to the dramaturgy of the beloved Cinderella.

In Malandain’s vision, he explores themes that he holds dear. Cinderella is the path of a star, a dancing star. Modern in form but classical at heart, his Cinderella delights the audience with a minimalist set, inventive stagecraft and exquisite taste.

The story behind Malandain’s version

A masterful work is often the child of a long gestation. Malandain had many hesitations before taking on Cinderella. He felt the 1985 Maguy Marin production, which set the ballet in a dollhouse, was almost perfection. And then there is his relationship with Prokofiev’s music. Malandain wrote, “[Prokofiev] composed a music sounding sincere, but sometimes contorted, ironic and harsh. I often kept his music at bay because it reflected in me like a faithful mirror and because I preferred to paint a less gloomy picture of my soul.”

Malandain did later choreograph for Profokiev’s last opus “La Fleur de Pierre” to great success. But something else was needed to prompt him to take on Cinderella. It finally came when he was offered the opportunity to stage it in the Royal Opera of Versailles, as well as the impetus providedby a Nietzsche quote – One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

In Greek mythology, chaos gave birth to the earth, the starry sky, and love. In the tale, Cinderella, considered by her cruel stepmother as a good-for-nothing, was made to clean the hearth and live among the ashes. But she became an accomplished young woman, a dancing star, thanks to love. This coming true of a dream symbolises self-fulfilment.

Every person can relate to Cinderella. Her doubt, denial, pain, hopes and cry for light. It is a cry for the serene brightness of stars to counterbalance an inner chaos. Malandain created his Cinderella to escape from the dark realities and from bleeding humanity, ignorance and human stupidity, and in a nutshell, to transcend the ordinary.

A stylish and clever production

It is said that this ballet was created on a shoestring, but budget cannot diminish artistic brilliance when the stars align. There is no change of scene, and the entire piece is performed on a stage whose only decorations are black stilettos hanging on three sides of the stage. It is stripped of pretence, but instead radiates real pleasure derived from humanity, the magic of the tale and the magnificence of its music. Malandain tells the story of Cinderella as we know it, but without the darker undertones that other productions often have. Humour is cleverly interwoven within the story, with the laughter of burlesque scenes counterbalancing dreamlike or unhappy episodes.

Danced on soft shoes, Malandain’s choreography allows the dancers’ technical brilliance to shine. Prokofiev’s music envisages Cinderella as a classical ballet with variations, adagios and pas de deux, requiring a corps de ballet of around 30 dancers. To get around this with a smaller company, Malandain uses a trick to double his number of dancers to arrange the climax: the ball at the court. His other inventive ideas include turning the pumpkin carriage into a simple wheel, and the glass slipper, a black stiletto. The overall grey tone and use of geometry lend the ballet a surprisingly modern and fashionable outlook but the mythical elements of Cinderella are kept in tact.

BLISS
AN ELECTRO / HIP-HOP PIECE BY COMPAGNIE RêVOLUTION

A night of dazzling dance moves and electrifying music

From its origins in the Bronx in the late 1960s, hip-hop has transformed from a youth subculture into an art form that embraces endless possibilities. Encompassing music, dance, graffiti and other street arts, it was part of the culture of the disenfranchised black communities but its influence has spread and deepened across territories. In contorting their bodies in ways never seen before in hip hop dance, artists find new forms of uninhibited self expression distinct from other established dance genres.

It is a pure joy of dance and movements that Anthony Egéa explores in Bliss, bringing together hip hop, the clubbing scene and electronic music in a feverish, hypnotising world. Set in the clubbing universe, Bliss is an exploration of a wide range of styles and forms, which Egéa breaks, distorts and then abandon. It is a dive into the fantasies, eccentricities and extravagance of nightclubs, where the audience is invited to revel, get lost in a contagious ecstasy and connect in the universality of dance.

An alchemy of styles and movement

This new work emerges from Egéa’s desire to return to the origin and spirit of hip hop. By developing a choreography fraught with different styles, he aims to unite all generations around the shared pleasure of dance. Bliss is a dance alchemy brewed by his years of research and experience. As he travels through the wide range of dance styles and forms, he also breaks them down and distorts them to the point where they are forgotten. It is when his alchemy takes place.

To return to the essence of the movements, Egéa calls upon collective memory while relying on an eclectic music score in the hopes of reaching out to most generations. He turns to electronic music, which, like a chameleon, has the ability to adapt itself to musical styles, and impose its own realm upon them, cutting across time and genres. Yvan Talbot, an acclaimed percussionist who is close to contemporary dance and the hip hop movement, created the music for Bliss.

Beyond the exploration of movements, Bliss is set in a club, where music is played to raise heart rates and pump up adrenaline to the level of ecstasy and fulfilment, which can be at times excessive. It is into this constant intensity and explosive crescendos that Egéa ventures and invites his dancers to join in.

By following the overnight journeys of individuals, one-night performers and talented virtuosos whose stories are revealed and intersected, the mood swings between lightness and intensity until everyone enters a state of delirium and comes close to a trance-like state. It is a percussive, massive dance that is counterbalanced by solos where the virtuoso caresses insanity to win over the audience.