Cancellation of the 48th Hong Kong Arts Festival’s Feb and Mar Performances and Events
Important Information about Art Basel Hong Kong 2020
We regret to inform you that Art Basel Hong Kong 2020 has been cancelled due to the severe outbreak and spread of the new coronavirus, which has recently been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected around the world. We remain committed to Hong Kong and look forward to welcoming you to the next edition of Art Basel Hong Kong on March 25-27, 2021.
All visitors who have purchased tickets via HK Ticketing can apply for full refund subject to HK Ticketing Refund Arrangement to be announced on hkticketing.com. Please contact [email protected] for further assistance.
Please note that: The Boston Symphony Orchestra has just announced the cancellation of their Asian Tour and withdrawal from the 48th HKAF.
48th HKAF: 13 February – 14 March 2020
125 performances, almost 1,900 international and Hong Kong artists, come and experience the 48th Hong Kong Arts Festival!
Launched in 1973, the Hong Kong ArtsFestival is a major annual festival in the region and the territory’s premier cultural event. Featuring local and international artists in an eclectic array of music, theatre, dance, and popular entertainment, the Festival takes place in over a dozen venues in February and March. In addition to commissions, the Festival publishes and produces original work, mainly in theatre and multi-media, available for subsequent touring. www.hk.artsfestival.org
All Programs
Opera
A grand and richly-textured opera-within-an-opera performed by an all-star cast
Music
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s return to Hong Kong after over 25 years is set to be the spectacular event in town with the Hong Kong debut of its music director, Andris Nelsons.
Historically informed performance in every detail
for 2 all-time Beethoven favourite symphonies
Step into Beethoven’s creative world with the Belgian orchestra Anima Eterna Brugge and narrator Pieter Bergé for a fun weekend of two family concerts!
An evening of chamber music for strings and winds
In October 2019, Christian Gerhaher and his long-time piano accompanist Gerold Huber have won their third Best Solo Vocal Award at the 2019 Gramophone Classical Music Awards for their album Frage.
“Jaw-dropping, one of the finest saxophonists going.”
Pitchfork (on Rudresh Mahanthappa)
“Terri Lyne Carrington can play drums at the highest level. She’s a master.”
Herbie Hancock
Beethoven’s and Mozart’s piano concerti will be exquisitely rendered on fortepiano by Kristian Bezuidenhout, 18th-century keyboard specialist,
accompanied by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
Experience the unique “Swiss approach” by the legendary Heinz Holliger, who will be conducting Kammerorchester Basel to perform works of his own and contemporary Swiss composer Schoeck – featuring celebrated baritone Christian Gerhaher!
“Many in the audience, I am sure, will never hear Renaissance music or polyphony the same way again.” Classical Voice
“Midori’s tone was, as ever, sweet and pure; an evergreen talent”
★★★★ Independent
“If you want to take Bach’s solo violin music to your heart, … Feng’s recordings strike me as well-nigh ideal” Gramophone
“Entertainment on the highest possible level” Der Tagesspiegel
The Czech Republic’s foremost professional choir sings works by Schubert, Bruckner, Pēteris Vasks, Eric Whitacre and contemporary Czech composers, which display the choir’s power and versatility.
Expressing the spirit of the city in sounds and images, this work encompasses both Shanghai’s storied past and aspirational future. This production features a large ensemble of traditional Chinese instruments accompanied by video of the cityscape.
Mahler’s monumental work Song of the Earth is given a theatrical and cinematic staging by the Chilean theatre group Teatrocinema. An immersive visual journey into Mahler’s musical statement on the transience of life.
Dave Brubeck’s son celebrates his father’s centenary year
“Profound commitment to playing music as if it was always being created anew.” Strings Magazine
Theatre
Macbettu (Macbeth) is the Sardinian adaptation of the great Shakespearian drama of ambition and the supernatural, staged with audacious physicality and an all-male cast by director Alessandro Serra.
The great romantic love story, Cyrano, immortalised on film by Gérard Depardieu and Steve Martin, is brought playfully to life by Tony Award-winning director Tom Morris and Bristol Old Vic with an exciting team of creatives and actors.
Peking opera pioneer Wu Hsing-kuo and his Contemporary Legend Theatre join forces with Zhang Jun, “the prince of kunqu”, for a daring adaptation of history’s ultimate betrayal. Witness the world premiere of the murder that rocked a republic on the coming Ides of March!
Two Ingmar Bergman screenplays are reimagined for the stage in a double bill by Tony Award-winning director Ivo van Hove. Van Hove’s adaptation of two Bergman’s groundbreaking works – After the Rehearsal/Persona is a love letter to theatre which is about the chaotic lives of theatre people, exposing the fine line between art and reality, illness and normality.
This cross-media production, featuring both screen and stage performances artfully interwoven together, was adapted specially for Isabelle Adjani from the original screenplay for John Cassavetes’ classic 1977 film Opening Night. The play is as intriguingly ambiguous and thought-provoking as the film which inspired it.
Juliet and Romeo reveals the real story of Romeo and Juliet. It turns out they didn’t die in a tragic misunderstanding, they grew up and lived happily ever after. Well they lived at least. With Lost Dog’s blend of dance, theatre and comedy this duet takes on our cultural obsession with youth and our inevitable issues with longevity.
Touchingly autobiographical yet powerfully universal, Nassim is a striking theatrical demonstration of how language can both divide and unite us. HKAF will localise the play into Cantonese for the first time, with a surprising guest artist for each performance.
Is it possible to mould the perfect wife? Molière’s comedy The School for Wives is interpreted by Stéphaneand and performed by the 200-year-old Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. It remains as coruscatingly funny as when it was first performed in 1662.
Marionette Theatre has always been Austria’s cultural ambassador since 1913. Marvel at the dancing, singing and acting of the refined wooden “cast” with your family at the all-time favourite musical The Sound of Music!
Hailed as the “most highly developed form of puppet and figure theatre” as the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, the Salzburg Marionette Theatre arrives with the marionette version of Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio.
The Hong Kong Arts Festival has been informed by the Sichuan People’s Art Theatre that their production of Teahouse will not be staged at the 48th Hong Kong Arts Festival as originally planned.
Advance Bookings for this performance have been stopped with immediate effect. For audiences who have already reserved tickets for Teahouse during the Advance Bookings period, the performance will remain included in the total number of performances booked for the purpose of calculating the discount offered.
Dance
Groundbreaking choreographer William Forsythe presents a vivid combination of new and existing work, A Quiet Evening of Dance, performed by seven of his most trusted collaborators. The works range from sparse analytic condensation to baroque inspired counterpoint, giving an intimate, pure evening of choreography, stripped down to its essence.
Conceived as both an homage to Béjart Ballet Lausanne founder Maurice Béjart and as an extension of his creative vision, stage director Marc Hollogne’s Dixit is a groundbreaking cinema-ballet-theatre production. It brings together archival film of Béjart and of excerpts from his signature pieces with choreographies by Gil Roman, in an unforgettable dialogue between past and present, achieved through the seamless integration of live and recorded performances.
Awarded with three Masques d’Ors in Moscow for its premiere with the Bolshoi Ballet in 2014, Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew—now danced by his own dance company, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo—is “a rollicking, rumbustious and romantic production” (The Times) with a fundamentally serious theme: the search for one’s better half.
Ballet superstar Sergei Polunin dances the role of the mystic Grigori Rasputin, whose mysterious influence over the Russian royal family did so much to bring down the Romanov dynasty. Polunin stars in this dance drama exploring the ambivalence between power and weakness, good and evil.
Rocío Molina fuses traditional flamenco and avant-garde dance improvisation fearlessly and with blazing passion. In Fallen from Heaven, she dances with captivating beauty and disturbing power through the course of a work that celebrates the many aspects of what it means to be a woman.
Family
Step into Beethoven’s creative world with the Belgian orchestra Anima Eterna Brugge and narrator Pieter Bergé for a fun weekend of two family concerts!
Following its rapturous reception at the 2014 HKAF, the Igor Moiseyev Ballet makes a triumphant return with two exciting programmes of inspired dance that will culminate in what promises to be an unforgettable festival experience – World Choreographic Voyage on 12 and 13 March and Legend of the Century on 14 and 15 March as the Festival Finale.
Following its rapturous reception at the 2014 HKAF, the Igor Moiseyev Ballet makes a triumphant return with two exciting programmes of inspired dance that will culminate in what promises to be an unforgettable festival experience – World Choreographic Voyage on 12 and 13 March and Legend of the Century on 14 and 15 March as the Festival Finale.
“Entertainment on the highest possible level” Der Tagesspiegel
Marionette Theatre has always been Austria’s cultural ambassador since 1913. Marvel at the dancing, singing and acting of the refined wooden “cast” with your family at the all-time favourite musical The Sound of Music!
Special
Two weekends of diverse, site-specific events to turn the unique heritage site of Tai Kwun into a playground for immersive artistic experiences, connecting artists’ visions with participants’ imaginations.
Free Admission
Details to be announced in mid-Dec 2019
Buy your tickets now: 2020 Hong Kong Arts Festival
Event Venue: Lyric Theatre, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, 1 Gloucester Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong 香港演藝學院 歌劇院