The Daughter of the Regiment by Donizetti, Fri 29 Jan 2010, From (2010/2010), Directed by Lo Kingman, Conductor Liao Guomin, Lio Kuokman, Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China

With this Musica Viva production of The Daughter of the Regiment, I finally fulfill my wish to present to the Hong Kong audience the three great comedies of Gaetano Donizetti. My first production of The Elixir of Love and Don Pasquale, many years ago, also took place in the City Hall, up to now still the venue with the best acoustics in the city. I believe that opera is musically most effective if sung in the language originally set by the composer. I also believe that comedies are theatrically most effective if interpreted in a language to which the audience can immediately respond. Donizetti originally composed this opera for the Opera Comique of Paris with pages of French dialogues. He later created an Italian version with long recitatives. I find the French version artistically more satisfying. In order to generate more immediate response from our audience, I have chosen to exercise some degree of poetic licence by altering slightly the historical context, the geographical reference and the background of certain characters in order to make it natural and logical for the dialogues to be spoken in English. All this is done without changing a single note in the music. By inventing a humorous pantomime in the Overture to substitute for a good deal of the dialogues, I have been able to speed up the action considerably. I hope you will enjoy it.