LUCIA DI LAMUR + THE SUPERNATURAL IN OPERA / The Creative Sync + Lirica Arts / Review

 

LUCIA DI LAMUR

The Creative Sync

SOTA Drama Theatre

Saturday (31 October 2026)

THE SUPERNATURAL IN OPERA

Lirica Arts

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (1 November 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 November 2026 with the title "Supernatural songs add thrills to Creative Sync and Lirica Arts' Halloween concerts".

It is Halloween night, and ghouls are about. A pale Water Ghost, played by Sonia Kwek, stalked the stage of Lucia di Lamur, a retelling of Gaetano Donizetti’s 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor by The Creative Sync. In this production sung in Italian directed by Su-Yin Mah, the original setting of Scottish lowlands was transported to a kampung in 1950s Malaya.

Photos: Amin Khairoodin

Lucia, sung by soprano Wendy Woon, is in love with tenor Alan Lau’s Edgardo, an enemy of her family and is violently opposed by her brother Enriko, helmed by baritone Kong Lingyi. Her forced marriage to the hammy Arturo (tenor Leslie Tay) sends her into a deathly spiral resulting in wedding bed mariticide and the opera’s famous mad scene.

Photo: Amin Khairoodin

In the absence of an orchestra, pianist Vincent Chen provided vivid accompaniment, as did executive director Hunter Mah’s guitar in pivotal moments including replacing the flute solo of the mad scene. Woon’s was a coloratura role which hit the high spots, including Act One’s Regnava nel silenzio (Reign of Silence) and the final act’s Il dolce suono (The Sweet Sound) leading into the blood-splattered Spargi d’amaro pianto (Cast On My Grave A Flower).

Photo: Amin Khairoodin

This production is to be lauded for its dark and atmospheric visual elements, cleverly employing film (Lucia running from her fate) and photography (a Malay village from an antique painting as backdrop). Act Two’s highlight was the Sextet, which had all six singers’ images and English transliterations projected behind them.

How this idyllic Malay painting got
transformed into the set's backdrop.

Enhancing this production was an informative exhibition on the production’s Malay influences, including P.Ramlee pontianak movies and sarong fabrics worn by the cast. The audience was also plied with Nyonya kuehs, local drinks and sweets. It’s trick or treat, after all.

Photo: Chris P.Lim

The diabolical theme continued into Lirica Arts’ lecture-recital The Supernatural In Opera, part of its Opera 101 series that demystifies the art-form. Researched and presented by local baritone Daniel Fong, ten operatic excerpts featuring demons, fairies, vampires, witches and the occult were celebrated.

Photo: Chris P.Lim

Selling your soul to the devil was a popular plot device of the Romantic era, represented by Johann Goethe’s Faust, so what better way to open with the final scene of Charles Gounod’s Faust? Chinese soprano Xiong Yufei (Marguerite), local tenor Shaun Lee (Faust) and Taiwanese bass-baritone Guan-Ming Chen (Mephistopheles) brilliantly carried off this spiritual tug-of-war between salvation and damnation accompanied by pianist Beatrice Lin.

The devil is more a seductive muse than outright menace, which Chen aptly showed in Voici des roses (Here Are Roses) from Hector Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Xiong stole the show in her arias portraying fairies and sprites in Ninfe! Elfi! from Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff and the famous Song to the Moon from Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka.

In an imperious show of prurient glee and bloodlust, local baritone and Lirica Arts founder Martin Ng leered and sneered in Ha, noch ein ganzen Tag (Ha, Another Whole Day) from Heinrich Marschner’s The Vampire. One did not need the words to know his intent. Tenor Lee also made his presence felt in The Fatal Vow from Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon, sung in English.

The last singer was Thai mezzosoprano Kridhima Siriwattanakamol, who created a stir by going full-goth in all-black. A stunning stage presence with a voice to match served her well in villainess roles. In the Witch’s Aria from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Du wilde Seherin (You Wild Sorceress, in duet with Ng) from Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, Jezibaba’s Aria from Dvorak’s Rusalka and Re del abisso (King of the Abyss) from Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, her Singapore debut will not be easily forgotten.

Photos: Chris P.Lim

FOLKLORE & ROOTS / Roberto Alvarez & Hunter Mah / Review

 

FOLKLORE & ROOTS 

Roberto Alvarez, Flute 

Hunter Mah, Guitar 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Saturday (18 January 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 January 2024 with the title "Roberto Alvarez & Hunter Mah's charming recital celebrates folk roots of classical music".

Much of the music we know and love come from age-old sources, passed down by oral tradition before being formally documented and scored on paper by scribes whom we now know as composers. Little has changed, as highlighted in this totally charming concert by Spanish flautist Roberto Alvarez (associate principal at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra) and Singaporean guitarist Hunter Mah. 

Not a single word was uttered by the performers in this 70-minute long audio-visual spectacle. The works were not announced, and known only to those who bothered to check the e-programme. They instead allowed the very accessible music and stunning visuals (selected by local film-maker Su-Yin Mah) projected on a giant screen behind to do the talking. 

Argentinian guitarist-composer Maximo Diego Pujol’s Two Candombe Airs opened the concert, both works associated with African-origin dances popular in Argentina and Uruguay. Alvarez’s sweet tone gilded the melodic lines, backed to the hilt by Mah’s infectiously rhythmic strumming, all this accompanied by a film which traversed the cosmos and centering on Planet Earth and its peoples. 

Undoubtedly the most familiar music on the programme was Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, which were appropriately accompanied by a kaleidoscopic array of Eastern European folk tapestry designs. Serbian guitarist-composer Dusan Bogdanovic’s No Feathers on this Frog was another folk-song based work founded on old sayings and witticisms. 

“A bird with a broken wing can still sing, but you cannot get feathers from a frog,” was a little obscure but one will be more familiar with “All that glitters is not gold” and “Barking dogs do not bite”. The colourful cartoons on show were more closely related to naive art. 

The tree of life was a
recurrent theme in the concert.

In lieu of an intermission, a short animated film by Su-Yin Mah entitled Elan Vital (2009) was a Monty Pythonesque look at the violent history of mankind, from its descent from apes into an ongoing legacy of war and bloodshed. 

Of special significance was the Asian premiere of young Singaporean composer Goi Ywei Chern’s Qart Hadasht (New City), representing the most modern music in the concert. Its four varied movements, inspired by landmarks of historical Carthage, involved a compendium of virtuoso techniques on Alvarez’s alto flute. The overall effect was exotic, mystical and hauntingly beautiful. 

The concert closed with lighter music, with Brazilian guitarist-composer Celso Machado’s Musiques Populaires Brasiliennes, its five movements based on the choros (street songs) and native dance rhythms well-known to outsiders such as the samba and bossa nova. The accompanying visuals were of food, games and children. 

Speaking of children, both daughters of the Mahs were the stars in the film for two of Robert Beaser Mountain Songs, Barbara Allen and Cindy. These contrasting slow and fast numbers were based on popular American vernacular folk songs. The zippy and catchy rhythms of the last was so well-received that it had to be encored. Just delightful.