THE LATE ABRAHAM HO AH LOKE, the great film producer, used to tell his friends the secret of his success: it was the number 5 - 5 songs, 5 dances and 5 laughs and 5 cries. With this formula he transformed many an actress such as Maria Menado into stars famous throughout the Lands Below the Wind. But in opera, as Verdi demonstrated in his tear jerker, La Traviata, you can drop the laughs and still fill the Dewan Sri with a capacity crowd. It was Penang's luck that director/producer Alain Laurent Wullschleger brought La Traviata convincingly to life with the aid of an excellent conductor from Chile, Eduardo Browne, who drew wondrous sounds from the motley collection of players in the Symphony Orchestra of Kuala Lumpur. Miyuki Morimoto (Violetta) and Donald J Byrne (Alfredo) did not disappoint with their singing, acting with a sincerity that stamped the production with authenticity.
In the 19th century the spectre of tuberculosis struck terror from London
to the Mediterranean. One of its victims was Robert Louis Stevenson who
sailed to the warmer climate of the Pacific islands to ameliorate his affliction.
Thousands were carried off in those dreadful times. The tragedy made
The Lady of the Camelias dying of t.b.utterly believable to those
who lived under the dreaded terror. With modern audiences such as the one
at the last night of Pesta Pulau Pinang YTL 2000 acting has to be of such
a level that tragedy does not degenerate into farce. Together with Andrew
D Mayor (father Germont), soprano and tenor managed to pull it off
in the difficult last Act, where the consumptive Violetta lies dying. Even
the man with the hand phone giving his friend at the other end a running
commentary on Miyuki and Byrne fell silent. The repeated applause and cries
of "Encore!" were justly deserved by the group
Patricia Shih
PATRICIA SHIH gave a stunning performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Penang Symphony Orchestra at the Dewan Sri in honour of the Governor's birthday. It would be a considerable understatement to say that the demanding technical problems presented by this concerto were handled with ease by this violinist who is endowed with a preternatural power, making nonsense of the violent denunciation of the critic Eduard Haslick: "the violin is no longer played but torn apart, pounded black and blue." Shih's controlled passion going to the heart of the music dwarfed the deficiencies of the orchestra. Her cadenza, with the breath taking double stops combining defiance and tenderness was one of the best we have ever heard .The orchestra must be congratulated for having kept up with Miss Shih in the prestissimo passages as must conductor Woon Wen Kim for not betraying the least signs of over sentimentality. Mention must be made of the clarinet and the bassoon which made their mark
The Canadian artiste was at 15 the youngest finalist and winner of a special prize at the 9th International Wieniawski Competition and prize winner at the 1992 International Kreisler Competition. It was her second visit to Penang; an earlier visit was made in 1995. The Penang crowd, typically Asian in reluctant expressions of gratitude, were niggardly in their encores but the orchestra made up for the lapse in a burst of wild enthusiasm, unusually clapping and stamping their feet. Despite the dreadful acoustics Shih's Galiano was easily heard and dominated the hall
Borodin's overture to Prince Igor introduced the concert, organised in honour of the birthday of the Governor. For the first time the bass was reinforced by seven double basses which vastly improved the sound. For the rest of the evening the audience had to endure the torture of blinding lights from the stage