The Macao International Music Festival has just grandly celebrated its 30th anniversary and the festivity lingers. Last year, we looked back at the growth of the Festival in the past 30 years. This year’s 31st Macao International Music Festival, under the theme “Rising Stars”, aims to learn from the past and march into the future. Innovation is the key to art development. There are pioneers who create innovative and unique work pieces in the music history, such as Igor Stravinsky’s avant-garde The Rite of Spring, Niccolò Paganini’s groundbreaking violin solos, and Gustav Mahler’s large-scale Symphony of a Thousand. Some have become classics while others defined an era, yet they all reflect the overpowering new talents and the radiant glamour of new models.
While savouring the beauty of classics, the Festival gives off an overwhelming power of radiance to Macao audience. Featuring works presented by dazzling young talents, reinterpretation of classics, grand productions brought by internationally famous ensembles and orchestras and the local productions, the Festival journeys into a brilliant new era of vivacity!
This year’s Festival features 17 programmes. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Umberto Giordano, the Festival opens with Giordano’s best-known opera Andrea Chénier. Beloved for its touching arias and exquisite orchestration, Andrea Chénier is a passionate love story written in the style of verismo. Lyric tragedy Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck will be staged outdoors at Mount Fortress. Local opera production, A Fragrant Dream, will be remade with a polished script, refined libretto and a starry line-up. Budding international talents such as Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas and South Korea’s leading ensemble Novus String Quartet, as well as local talents in the third cycle of the Bravo Macao! concert series will grace the stage at the Festival.
A number of world-renowned ensembles and orchestras will appear on stage at this year’s Festival. The distinguished Vienna Philharmonic will be performing a resounding finale, while the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen will delight its audience with a night of Beethoven. Other famous musicians and ensembles include Chen’s erhu family, rising jazz star Jazzmeia Horn, fresh electronic musician el fog, the acclaimed Coro Lirico Siciliano, the joyous South African ensemble Soweto Gospel Choir and Hong Kong singer William So.
The 31st Macao International Music Festival is about to start. Come embark with us on this musical expedition to witness the courage to try and the force to progress.
Leung Hio Ming
President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government