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Macau festival changes its tune

By Bradley Winterton
SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
Thursday, Oct 05, 2000, Page 11

Popular singer, Taiwan's Coco Lee, who will be appearing at the festival. PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES

Macau's annual music festivals are a delight -- relaxed affairs, with cheap ticket prices, in a picturesque city at the nicest time of the year on the South China coast.

It is essentially a classical music festival. But this year's event, the first since the former Portuguese enclave was handed back to China last December, is deliberately targeting a more popular audience.

This is not to say that the organizers are not aiming for quality at the same time. The festival's ambition appears to be to introduce all and sundry to the most accessible attractions the classical tradition has to offer.

The festival begins and closes especially strongly. The opening event, the first of three performances of Verdi's opera Otello in a co-production with London's Royal Covent Garden Opera House, parades the best there is in the most sumptuous of musical art forms. One of the great baritones of the era, Paolo Coni, will sing the role of Iago.

The closing night will be unashamedly a crowd-pleaser -- Macau's first ever "cross-over" concert in which the worlds of pop and opera meet. Taiwan's CoCo Lee, Hong Kong's Eason Chan and Macau's Miro Pinto will share the stage with soloists from Otello, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the National Opera of China Chorus from Beijing.

Yuan Fang, Macau Chamber Orchestra conductor. Photo: Macau Chamber Orchestra

Between these two events there is a wide variety of offerings.

The highlights are two nights of flamenco from the Spanish National Ballet, two nights of Tchaikovsky ballet (Sleeping Beauty and a mysterious "Tchaikovsky gala") from the National Ballet of Latvia, and what promises to be a very unusual evening from the Shanghai Opera's dance troupe.

A member of the National Opera of China's orchestra rehearsing in Beijing. Photo: Bradley Winterton

In this last, Rachmaninov's immensely popular "Second Piano Concerto" and Orff's Carmina Burana are both being performed as ballet music. Orff's unique extravaganza, featuring lustful monks pursuing willing maidens, was written for the stage (in 1937) but is usually given in a concert version. Rachmaninov's concerto has probably never been used as a ballet score anywhere before.

The National Opera of China orchestra. Photo: Bradley Winterton

Three of the events are free of charge. The first is a jazz concert by the Chicago Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra. Next comes Xian Xinghai's "Yellow River Cantata", given outdoors on the steps of the city's famous St Paul's Ruins. And the Macau Chamber Orchestra under Yuan Fang offers a free evening, mostly of Beethoven, inside the beautiful and recently restored St Dominic's Church.

Then there's Gilbert Kaplan and Mahler's Second Symphony. Kaplan is a successful New York businessman who doubles as an amateur conductor, but only of this one symphony. He has performed it with some 40 orchestras worldwide. In Macau it will be with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the combined choruses of the National Opera of China and Shanghai Opera, plus soloists.

The Macau Chamber Orchestra. PhotO: Macau Chamber Orchestra

The festival's new Artistic Director, the Hong Kong-born opera tenor Warren Mok, is confident performances will sell out quickly.

"The Macau International Music Festival has become one of the most important festivals in Asia," he said in an interview. "This year we are trying to broaden the audience. We are promoting the festival as international and accessible, attractive to international visitors and to local audiences. My goal is to ensure the festival continues to blossom."

THE 14th MACAU INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL Oct. 7, 11 and 14: Opera Otello by Verdi, with Paolo Coni, Antonio Barasorda, and Iano Tamar; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 8: Chicago Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra (free admission); NAPE, 9pm. Oct 9: Shanghai Traditional Music Orchestra and Macau Chinese Orchestra; Forum II, 8pm. Oct 10 and 13: Flamenco from Spanish National Ballet; University of Macau, 8pm. Oct 12: Concertante Chamber Ensemble, USA; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 14: Shanghai Traditional Music Orchestra; Lou Lim Ioc Gardens, 4pm. Oct 15: "Yellow River Cantata", Shanghai SO and Chorus, National Opera of China Chorus (free admission); Ruins of St Paul, 8pm. Oct 16: Latvian National Ballet -- Tchaikovsky Gala; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 17: "Mahler Symphony No: 2", cond. Kaplan; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 18: Macau Chamber Orchestra, cond. Yuan Fang (free admission); St Dominic's Church, 8pm. Oct 19: Shanghai Opera House Dance Troupe in Rachmaninov and Orff; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 20: Latvian National Ballet -- Sleeping Beauty; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. Oct 21: Closing Gala; Macau Cultural Centre, 8pm. For reservations, and more information on the 14th Macau International Music Festival, call (853) 555-555 in Macau and (852) 7171-7171 in Hong Kong, or visit the Web Sites www.icm.gov.mo/fimm and www.kongseng.com.mo The festival's e-mail address is fimm@icm.gov.mo

The prominence of artists from Shanghai in this year's Macau festival is due to Mok's strong links with the city.

Returning to Asia from Europe in 1994 following almost a decade with the Deutsche Oper (German Opera) in Berlin, he immediately launched a new career that combined singing with opera production. His productions of Romeo and Juliet and Carmen in Shanghai in 1996 and 1997 were landmark events there, the first quality productions of Western operas for more than 50 years. Mok himself sang the leading male role in both productions.

Seat prices in Macau have always been reasonable. This year prices are NT$800 and below for all events except Otello and the closing gala, where seats range from NT$400 to NT$1,400. Tickets for some of the smaller events are all NT$400.

The festival conveniently ranges over three weekends. The first and last showings of Otello, for instance, are on Saturday nights, and two of the three free events take place on Sunday evenings.

First-time visitors to Macau should note that the place to go for after-concert relaxation is the sea-front a couple of hundred yards to the west of the Macau Cultural Centre (the venue for many of the concerts). A string of southern European-style cafes and restaurants have recently opened in this area, and they're never busier than around 10pm.

Macau is already a popular destination for people from Taiwan, even if many only touch down en route for China. The International Music Festival provides a good pretext for stopping over and getting to know the charms of the old Chinese/Portuguese entrepot a little bit better.
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