British school to perform opera scenes in China

Opera scenes [Photo provided to China Daily]

London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama will be presenting a series of informal performances of classical and contemporary operatic excerpts in Shanghai on 3 April.

The performances, titled 'Opera Scenes', is directed by Victoria Newlyn with musical director Susanna Stranders. The performances opened on March 25 at the central London performance venue Milton Court.

In 'Opera Scenes', 12 singers and two repetiteurs from the Guildhall School Opera Course will perform a range of excerpts in a workshop setting, including scenes from Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias, Handel's Ariodante and Mozart's Così fan Tutte, Mitridate and Don Giovanni.

The programme also features Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, Britten's Albert Herring, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann and concludes with excerpts from two Bellini operas – I Capuleti e I Montecchi and I Puritani – and Massenet's Manon.

The performances in Shanghai, which are supported by the City of London Corporation and the Shanghai Grand Theatre Arts Group Cultural Development Foundation, will be called the Opera Connect Gala, and will take place against the background of the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange in 2015.

Barry Ife, principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, said the project gives the school's students a great opportunity to communicate their art to a new audience and he hopes this will be the start of a regular exchange of artistic projects including bringing some classical Chinese opera to London. Ife said that the Opera Scenes performance allows the audience to be very close to the singers and the action, and offers the audience a taste of the 'immersive' theatre form, which has attracted a great interest from China.

"When I was in Shanghai last October I was struck by the high level of interest among Chinese colleagues in 'immersive' theatre, as developed in the UK by companies such as Punchdrunk," he said.