DgcitySouthern China is midway through one of its largest performing arts gatherings. The sixth Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Culture and Arts Festival runs from Oct 31 to Nov 30, packing 75 productions, 148 performances, 25 exhibitions and close to 100 outreach activities into 11 cities.
The festival is co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. Its scale reflects a deliberate push to treat the bay area, a cluster of cities with more than 70 million people, as a single international arts market rather than a collection of separate venues.
For the first time, the opening ceremony was held in Shenzhen. The Bay Opera of Shenzhen hosted the premiere of Pearl River, an original symphonic suite by Yu Long, co-composed with Shu Nan and Chen Si’ang and led by conductor Huang Yi with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and the Shenzhen Opera and Dance Theater chorus. Landmarks across all 11 cities lit up the same evening. The closing ceremony will be held on Dec 3 at Guangzhou’s Xinghai Concert Hall, in a concert version of Verdi’s La Traviata featuring the Italian baritone Leo Nucci.
The international lineup is unusually heavy. Of 75 productions, 22 are imports, nearly a third of the program. Anna Netrebko makes her first visit to Shenzhen, Yuja Wang plays a conductorless concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Guangzhou, Anne-Sophie Mutter returns to the city after 15 years, and Diana Krall brings her jazz songbook. The Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski leads the Hong Kong Philharmonic in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.
Domestic works number 41, with a third coming from Hong Kong and Macao and 12 original Guangdong productions. The stage trilogy Blossoms will be performed in full in the bay area for the first time, a nine-hour narrative spread across two Guangzhou theaters. The National Ballet of China will present Swan Lake alongside The Red Detachment of Women, and seven regional opera genres bring more than ten Plum Blossom Award winners, including the viral Wu Opera piece Three Battles with the White Bone Demon and Cantonese Opera’s Lady Xian.
A record 36 productions are making their bay area debuts, which organizers point to as evidence the region has become a launch pad rather than merely a tour stop. Alongside the stage program, 25 exhibitions run across venues in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, including a major painting show at the new Guangdong Museum of Art branch.
