SYMPHONY BEYOND TIME / TARANTELLA - DANCE IN SYMPHONY / Music For People Festival Orchestra & NTU Symphony Orchestra / Review

SYMPHONY BEYOND TIME

Music For People Festival Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (3 June 2026)

TARANTELLA – DANCE IN SYMPHONY

NTU Symphony Orchestra

SOTA Concert Hall

Friday (5 June 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 June 2026 with the title "Music For People Festival Orchestra delivers an all-Beethoven spectacle".

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s season is officially over, but large-scale orchestral music continues unabated. Just last week, the Orchestra of the Music Makers performed Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, and this week’s blockbuster was Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, delivered by the not-for-profit Music For People Festival Orchestra led by young Sarawak-born conductor Audrey Chung.

The all-Beethoven evening opened with the Triple Concerto in C major (Op.56), with Elite Artists Trio from Taiwan as soloists, comprising violinist Qin-Yun Du, cellist Limu Ya and pianist Sherry Chen. This unusual work casts the cello in the lead, and Ya’s song-like solos held up, well-balanced by her partners with the trio functioning like a united team all through its three tuneful movements.

The orchestra supported the enterprise well, and it should be no surprise as the majority of its professional players are stalwarts of the Singapore Symphony, re:mix, re:Sound, Concordia Quartet and Red Dot Baroque. Thus, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 in D minor (Op.125) felt like a breeze in its fairly swift 65 minutes, led from memory by Chung. There were no extremes in tempi in the first two fast movements, while the Adagio unfolded magisterially with much aural beauty.

Who was not waiting for the famous choral finale? Notwithstanding inappropriate applause in between movements, the faux pas inexcusably repeated while the Ode To Joy was well underway, this epic sing out was still a spectacle. The excellent quartet of soloists, well-known for appearances with the Singapore Lyric Opera, comprised soprano Jessica Chen, mezzo-soprano Anna Koor, tenor Lee Jae-wook and bass William Lim.

The 220-member choir (Nicholas Tham, chorusmaster), the largest assembled for such a work in recent years, created the biggest sound possible, ensuring this was a truly memorable event. Proceeds of ticket sales went to palliative care organisations and music education programmes for underprivileged communities.

On Friday, it was the turn of the students from the Nanyang Technological University Symphony Orchestra (NTUSO), directed by Chan Wei Shing, to strut their stuff. Central to the dance-themed programme were Singapore premieres of two 20th century cello concertos performed by Loke Hoe Kit, a specialist in performing unusual repertoire.

Photo: Loke Chee Meng

Frenchman Darius Milhaud’s Cello Concerto No.1 (1934) has its serious and light-hearted sides. A darkly elegiac slow movement was starkly contrasted by the opening’s nonchalant lilt, like an insouciant stroll along the Seine, and the finale’s carnival atmosphere in the form of a tarantella. The fast Italian dance in 12/8 rhythm gave the concert its title.

Virtuosity on the cello continued into Austrian composer Erich Korngold’s single-movement Cello Concerto (1946), reliving the opulence of Hollywood as it was an expansion of music from the movie Deception (1946) starring Bette Davis. Reveling in lyrical gifts and contrapuntal novelties, both soloist and orchestra provided a memorable first outing for this underrated mini-masterpiece.

The concert began with Mexican composer Arturo Marquez’s very popular Danzon No.2, generating a terrific crescendo and momentum from its quietly sedate opening pages. The main work was Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No.8 in G major, which provided the young musicians with their toughest technical and musical challenges.

Listening beyond the rough edges, it was a performance of much commitment and enthusiasm. Although beginning tentatively, the ensemble grew in confidence with each phrase. With the dance and folk-inspired third and fourth movements finally clicking into motion for a spirited finish, one senses much more will be heard from this outfit in time to come.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS / New Opera Singapore Gala Dinner 2025

The New Opera Singapore (NOS) annual gala dinner was held on Sunday 16 November 2025, and having missed the previous years' events, there was no chance we would be missing it this year. The Grand Ballroom of the Fullerton Hotel played host to an evening of good music and fine dining by the only opera company in Singapore that receives a major annual grant by the National Arts Council. 

Founded by Korean soprano Jeong AeRee and her husband the cellist-conductor Chan Wei Shing in 2022, NOS celebrates its 14th anniversary this year. Known for its edgy productions that break all rules and pre-conceptions, NOS has been responsible for some of the most memorable opera productions in recent years. Here are some pictures from a scintillating evening.

The NOS Chorus performs the
Bell Chorus from Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci.

NOS Chairman Michael Tay greets one and all.

Appetiser: Sliced scallops.

And the concert begins:
Soprano Kezia Robson and tenor Edward Kim
in the Papa-Papageno duet from Mozart's Magic Flute.
Baritone Martin Ng in Charles Ives' Circus Band.

Tenor Shaun Lee in Licino Refice's Ombra di nube
and Sim Wei Ying in Nicholas Ho's Chicken Rice.

Soprano Lydia Li in Zhai Shui Di Fang
and Kezia Robson in the Drinking Song 
from Offenbach's La Perichole.

Main courses:
Salmon or beef cheek?

Edward Kim's sung Korean is impeccable
while Shaun Lee & Sim Wei Ying
ham it up in the Watch Duet 
from Strauss' Die Fledermaus.

Chan Wei Shing plays a Shepherd Song
while master calligrapher does his work.

The final Champagne Chorus from Die Fledermaus.

Chan Wei Shing plays the
garang (aggressive) auctioneer.

Finally, dessert!

Hobnobbing with the celebs:
Ever the promiscuous chorister, Patricia Teng
sings in every opera chorus.

With Chan Wei Shing and Martin Ng, who has
his own opera company Lirica Arts.

NOS Chairman Michael Tay

NOS Founder & Artistic Director Jeong AeRee.

All the beautiful people
take a final photo for the road.

LA PIZZA CON FUNGHI & LE VILLI / New Opera Singapore / Review

LA PIZZA CON FUNGHI AND LE VILLI

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Saturday (23 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 August 2025 with the title "A delightful double bill of light and dark operas".

Love, vendettas and death are the lifeblood of operas. Take them out, and all the music and dramatics fall flat. New Opera Singapore’s (NOS) double bill of two vastly contrasting hour-long operas, directed by Jeong Ae Ree and conducted by Chan Wei Shing, had loads of these and some more.

Opening the evening was the dark comic opera La Pizza Con Funghi (1988) by American composer Seymour Barab (1921-2014), a coup from left of field. Sung in English and filled with all the favourite tropes and stereotypes of Italian opera, it was a laugh-a-minute affair reminiscent of NOS’s opera comique farces from years past.

Voluptua (sung by soprano Lara Tan), who is having an affair with Scorpio (tenor Shaun Lee), plots to kill her husband Count Formaggio (baritone Edward Kim) by poisoning his favourite mushroom pizza (hence the Italian title). 

However, her maid Phobia (mezzosoprano Rebecca Chellappah) switches the toxin and has Scorpio offed instead. This sets off a chain reaction of murders, where everyone takes forever to sing “Ah, You Have Killed Me” before they actually die. That is not before a consanguineous relationship between the two dying men is finally revealed.

What worked best here were the comedic timing and dysfunctional chemistry between the characters. This was aided by their whitened faces (masking their true colours) and a funky all-pink set design by RT+Q Architects that turned red at the very end. This opera is a little gem that deserved to be better-known.

Very different was Giacomo Puccini’s first opera Le Villi (The Fairies, 1884), which was as serious as Pizza was hilarious. Despite its unevenness, there were telling hints of Puccini’s full-blown lyricism and future greatness. This also featured the evening’s strongest singers backed by the 18-member NOS Chorus, in white face paint and led by Dawn Yin, which shone just as brightly.

Roberto (tenor Nomher Nival) pledges his faith to his betrothed Anna (soprano Zhang Jie) before he leaves town to seek his fortune. Predictably, he strays and squanders the wealth, and Anna dies during childbirth. Her father Guglielmo (baritone Min Seung Kang) curses him to a worse fate. The eponymous Fairies, sung by the chorus, avenge women who die from abandonment by fatally haunting their fallen men.

The opera’s two acts play like day and night. Act One proffered hope and happiness with clear and light shades with the villagers singing their blessings. By contrast, Act Two was dark and murky, achieved with excellent lighting design by Alberta Wileo, with the chorus now in black outfits and ushering in impending doom.

Overwrought acting now ruled, giving a new meaning to melodramatic. Roberto is contrite but ghost Anna and the Fairies are unforgiving, leading to an airing of the opera’s best-known music, the orgiastic La Tregenda (The Spectre) before a frenzied and fatal conclusion.

With this success and its warm audience reception, the intrepid New Opera Singapore is now encouraged to explore next the single-act operas of Sergei Rachmaninov.

Photography by Chris P.Lim

RIGOLETTO / New Opera Singapore / Review

 

RIGOLETTO 

New Opera Singapore 

Victoria Theatre 

Sunday (18 August 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 August 2024 with the title "NOS puts on snappy staging of Rigoletto".

Western opera is in such a parlous state of state funding in Singapore these days such that the only fully staged opera production of the year was Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851) presented by New Opera Singapore (NOS). Despite being one of the Italian’s most popular operas (after La Traviata and Aida), one has to go as far back at 1993 for its last production here. 

That was during the fledgling years of Singapore Lyric Theatre, fronted by conductor Lim Yau and the late producer Leow Siak Fah, where setting Rigoletto in stylish Shanghai of the 1920s was both audacious and creative. This latest production directed by NOS founder Jeong Ae Ree and conducted by her husband Chan Wei Shing was more traditional but no less edgy. 

A more contemporary noir setting with hints of Italian mafioso elements coloured this sorry tale of curses and vendettas. The hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto has been cursed, and as he vainly protects his secret daughter Gilda from the clutches of the lascivious Duke of Mantua, he dooms her instead. There were three shows featuring three different casts, and the final evening was none too shabby. 

Photo: New Opera Singapore

Front and centre was Korean baritone Min Seung Kang as the eponymous anti-hero, whose bitterness in life was as pronounced as his limp. He was the perfect antithesis to Korean soprano Renata Hann, whose Gilda was purity and innocence personified in her pure lilywhite dress. Her fateful mistake was being self-sacrificial for someone as unworthy as the Duke. 

That smarmy antagonist was sung by Latvian tenor Martins Smaukstelis, whose suaveness came through in the hit arias Questa o Quella (This Woman Or That) and La Donna e Mobile (Women Are Fickle). More important were the duets involving Hann and both men, which were heartrending and totally believable. She herself hit all the high notes in Caro Nome (Sweet Name), a favourite of coloratura sopranos. 

Photo: New Opera Singapore

Another highlight was the final act’s famous quartet Bella Figlia dell’Amore (Fairest Daughter Of Love), with mezzo-soprano Carolyn Holt’s Maddelena making the foursome, where the Duke’s infidelity is exposed to both Rigoletto and Gilda. 

The supporting roles were well cast, with cheap assassin Sparafucile (he charges 20 dollars a kill but operates a Harley?) portrayed by Fionn O hAlmhain attired as a biker, Shaun Lee (Borsa), Cai Xiaofeng (Count), Li Yang (Countess), Stefan Szkafarowsky (Monterone) and Jasmine Towndrow (Giovanna), a truly cosmopolitan team. 

Photo: New Opera Singapore

The choir led by Chong Wai Lun provided mostly light-hearted relief, the men donning masks as voyeurs and kidnappers being particularly comedic. The set and lighting design was simple but effective by setting the boundaries between groups of singers, making small spaces seem like fair distances. It took little for the storm / lightning scene leading to the opera’s fatal end to suggest bad weather and bad karma. 

Director Jeong Ae Ree and
Conductor Chan Wei Shing take their bows.

Ultimately, the story-telling through music was direct, well-paced and nothing was left to drag. All in all, a very successful outing for NOS, which could more than just tip the scales for a shout of being Singapore’s leading opera company today.

DVORAK'S RUSALKA / New Opera Singapore / Review

DVORAK’S RUSALKA

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Sunday (20 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 August 2023 with the title "Tragic, moving staging of Dvorak's Rusalka".

New Opera Singapore (NOS) has garnered an enviable reputation over the years with successful productions of operas that are not exactly household names. In the midst of the pandemic, it mounted online Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, while Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone and Francis Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine saw the light of day in 2022. This year brought out the Singapore premiere of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s opera Rusalka. Its fame outside of the old Czechoslovakia was long premised on a single hit aria.

 

Composed in 1900 with libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil, this was a variation of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known Little Mermaid story, about a water nymph who sacrifices her identity and  voice for the love of a human prince. It makes for a ridiculous story but unlike Andersen’s (or Disney’s) version, this one directed by NOS founder Jeong Ae Ree has no happy ending. Sung in English rather than the original Czech, and with helpful English and Chinese surtitles provided, there was also no mistaking its tragic narrative.

 

London-based soprano Victoria Songwei Li as the titular Rusalka was a stunning presence. Her multi-faceted acting abilities, which navigated from lovesick longing, through frustration and confusion to finally grief, was as moving as her singing. The unforgettable Song To The Moon (Mesicku Na Nebi Hlobokem or Moon Deep In The Heavens), which came early in the first act, was beautifully rendered in Czech, setting the tone for the dramatics to unfold.   

 

Excellent Latvian tenor Martins Smaukstelis as the ill-fated Prince, towered over Li in physical stature, but as the story goes, would have made for a very poor Tinder match. Destined to hear her voice only in the third act’s final duet, his earnest yet misguided strivings would get no satisfaction except in death.

 

The supporting cast was just as good, particularly mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah as the smarmily evil witch Jezibaba, who was balanced by baritone Martin Ng’s Water Gnome with his woe-laden lines. Soprano Joyce Lee Tung as the seductive Foreign Princess was the Prince’s principal distraction, her striking red gown a stark contrast to adversary Li’s pallid one.

 

Tenor Leslie Tay (Hunter/Gamekeeper), soprano Lara Tan (Turnspit), water spirits Ashley Chua, Rachel Ong and Wen-Yu Tseng provided added commentary, levity and comic relief to the otherwise dark tale. Members of Symphonia Choralis (Chong Wai Lun, chorusmaster) had multiple roles, including playing wedding guests, mysterious denizens and wave simulations of the watery realm.

 

The inclined stage designed by RT+Q Architects was simple yet evocative, providing the illusion of depth and added dimension. The NOS Orchestra, a chamber sized outfit, conducted by Chan Wei Shing supported the singers well, and there was little to no risk of them being drowned out in the lush late-Romantic score.

 

Despite a lean annual budget, NOS has always delivered. From the quality of singing, fresh ideas in presentation to honest-to-goodness production values, this sympathetic production of Dvorak’s Rusalka would be no exception.   

Concert photographs by Chrisppics+