Conductor Chien Wen-pin (
Lai promises "a sort of elegant Asian Sex in the City and will approach Mozart's classic through its main women characters who he says represent three very different approaches to love, romance and sexuality.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Anna will be sung by Chen Yen-ling (陳妍陵) who was so persuasive in the role ofTosca two years ago, and Giovanni by Bei Yu-hsi (白玉璽), Sharpless in the TSO's Madama Butterfly. Tsai Wen-hao (蔡文浩) (Brander in the NSO The Damnation of Faust) will sing Leporello, and in a
surprising move the roles of the Commendatore and Masetto will be doubled and sung by Lee Ta-jen (
There are high expectations, too, for Sandra Woodall's costumes and decor -- timeless and placeless, according to Lai, but at the same time reflecting contemporary Taipei.
San Francisco-based Woodall worked with Performance Workshop on both Welcome to Shangrila and Lai's eight-hour epic Dream Like a Dream.
This looks all set to be a major event and shouldn't be missed. Seventy percent of the tickets are already sold, but seats were still available at press time at NT$600, NT$800, NT$1000, NT$1,200, NT$1,500 and NT$2,000 for both performances.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your