Tag: lecture

Opera Director Greg Eldridge Looks to Inform and Entertain Hong Kong Audiences

Opera has always balanced tradition with reinvention. While the great works of the repertoire may be centuries old, each new production depends on artists who can reinterpret them for modern audiences. For Australian-born opera director Greg Eldridge, that balance between history and contemporary performance has shaped a career that now spans major opera houses, universities, and international collaborations.

This week, audiences and students in Hong Kong will have a rare chance to hear directly from Eldridge when he appears as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series presented by the English Department at the University of Hong Kong. His visit will include a public lecture and a series of workshops with emerging performers — offering insight into the evolution of acting for the operatic stage from early history through to today.

For anyone curious about the craft behind opera, the event promises a practical look inside one of the performing arts’ most complex collaborative forms.

A Connection to the Asia-Pacific Region.

Although much of Eldridge’s career has been spent working in Europe and North America, he maintains strong ties to the Asia-Pacific region.

“I’m so excited to be visiting Hong Kong for these workshops”, Eldridge says. “Not just because it brings me closer to my home in Australia, but also because there is such a wealth of talent in this part of the world”.

Those connections are one of the reasons he is looking forward to engaging directly with Hong Kong’s performing arts community during his visit.

“I’m so looking forward to working with the University for my workshops, and can’t wait to meet the next generation of opera talent right here in Hong Kong.”

An International Career in Opera

Opera directing today is an inherently international profession. Directors often move between projects and companies, adapting to different artistic traditions and performance cultures. For Eldridge, that global environment has become a defining part of his professional life.

Eldridge began his career in Australia before moving into the international opera circuit, where he has now worked on over 80 productions in 14 countries. Early recognition came when he joined the prestigious Je:e Parker Young Arst Programme at the Royal Opera House in London, and, following several 5-star productions, in 2015 the Royal Opera created the position of Jette Parker Associate Director especially for him.

Greg Eldridge- 2026

Since then, Eldridge has collaborated with opera companies and festivals throughout Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. His work has included projects in countries ranging from Germany and Iceland to Australia and the United States, and at major international theatres including Teatro Real in Spain, Glyndebourne Festival Opera in England, LA Opera in the USA and Den Norske Opera in Norway. Eldridge will come to Hong Kong fresh from working on Sir David McVicar’s new Ring Cycle at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, before returning to Germany to direct a new production of The Lodger for Oper Wuppertal.

Looking Ahead to 2027

The lecture and workshops will also offer a preview of a much larger project already planned for the city.

In 2027, Eldridge will return to Hong Kong to direct a new production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi. The opera will be staged by OperaBox and is expected to mark a historic milestone: the first time a Baroque opera has been staged in Hong Kong.

Premiered in 1643, L’Incoronazione di Poppea is widely regarded as one of the earliest masterpieces of the operatic repertoire. Its story — chronicling the rise of Poppea to become the wife of the Roman emperor Nero — blends political ambition, romance, and moral ambiguity in ways that still resonate with modern audiences.

Baroque opera places particular demands on directors and performers, requiring a careful balance between historical style and contemporary storytelling. Eldridge’s work on the production will introduce Hong Kong audiences to a repertoire that is increasingly popular on international stages but rarely performed locally.

Greg Eldridge- 2026

A Rare Opportunity to See the Creative Process Up Close

Because of that upcoming production, Eldridge’s visit to the University of Hong Kong carries added significance – this lecture and workshop series will be the only opportunity for the public to see him at work in Hong Kong before he returns in 2027.

For audiences, it offers a glimpse into the creative thinking that goes into staging opera — long before a production reaches the theatre.

The University of Hong Kong presents Greg Eldridge as part of its 2026 Distinguished Lecture Series. For full details and to book a place for the lecture and workshops, please visit: www.english.hku.hk.

For information about Opera Box’s 2027 production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea, please visit: www.operabox.org

Text: Alexis Speed
Images: Edmond Choo

Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26: Greg Eldridge
Date: 4:30pm, 17 March 2026
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus
Tickets: Free with registration here

Familiar Strangers: Social Media and the Outsider in China

Anthropological accounts of social relations within Chinese society have traditionally viewed both kinship and familiarity as the basis of relationships between persons, which has inevitably led to the exclusion of strangers from the majority of attempts to theorize such relations. This lecture draws on ethnographic evidence collected during 15 months of fieldwork studying the impact of social media use in a rural Chinese town, which revealed the nature of these novel relationships with strangers which are facilitated by social media.

Through these ethnographic cases and observations, Tom McDonald will argue that participants do not position strangers that they meet on social media outside of their network of social relations. Instead, the mediatized relationships offered by social media come to represent a ready source of potential friends with whom they are both eager and willing to interact. On occasion,the stranger as integral, rather than antithetical to sociality, and it is actually these strangers who individuals feel they can most easily confide in, and share intimate feelings – or experiences – with.

Familiar Strangers: Social Media and the Outsider in Chinese Kinship
Hong Kong Anthropological Society, Tom McDonald
Date: 7pm, 18 January, 2017
Venue: Hong Kong Museum of History
Tickets: Free
More info: www.facebook.com/hkanthro

I Chose to Climb”: Celebrating 65 years of Climbing the World’s Greatest Peaks

chris-bonnington

The Royal Geographical Society Hong Kong welcomes back to Hong Kong Sir Chris Bonington, one of the greatest mountaineers in history, and an eloquent and entertaining lecturer. On this occasion, Sir Chris lectures on “I Chose to Climb”: Celebrating 65 years of Climbing the World’s Greatest Peaks”. This is the story of his extraordinary career, from his first adventures on mountains in the early 1950s to his ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, a repeat of his famous first ascent, at the age of 80 last summer. The lecture covers the best of his amazing adventures in between, including a tour of his first ascents in the great ranges, as always accompanied by unrivalled mountain photography. He gives a very personal story of adventure, triumph and tragedy, shared with some of the greatest characters of mountaineering, illustrated with superb images and video.

I Chose to Climb”: Celebrating 65 years of Climbing the World’s Greatest Peaks
Date: 7:30pm, 22 June, 2015
Venue: Jockey Club Lecture Theatre, Olympic House, 1 Stadium Path, So Kon Po, Causeway Bay
Tickets: $250

Gifts to a Former Mentor: Hong Kong’s contribution to the rise of China and the consequences of that rise for the current relationship

The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, fires and colonial rule in Hong Kong, 1950-1963

An Anthropological Talk by Alan Smart – Gifts to a Former Mentor: Hong Kong’s Contribution to the Rise of China and the Consequences of That Rise for the Current Relationship

Hong Kong made a crucial contribution to China’s rise, but in the last fifteen years the balance of influence has shifted. China’s rise has changed the relationship between China and Hong Kong since 1997. Rather than Hong Kong offering important mentorship, increasingly its economy is dependent on Beijing’s goodwill, a wealthy supplicant whose economic importance is hostage to political considerations that make preserving the SAR’s economic vitality desirable to China’s leadership. A series of “gifts” from Beijing to Hong Kong have made the SAR increasingly dependent on Beijing’s goodwill.

Alan Smart (PhD, U of Toronto, 1986) is Professor, Department of Anthropology, U of Calgary. Research in Hong Kong, China and Canada, on housing, cities, borders, agriculture and transnationalism. Author of “The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, fires and colonial rule in Hong Kong, 1950-1963” (Hong Kong U Press, 2006), and numerous articles.

Following the talk, you are invited to a self-paying dinner with the speaker.

An Anthropological Talk by Alan Smart – Gifts to a Former Mentor: Hong Kong’s Contribution to the Rise of China and the Consequences of That Rise for the Current Relationship
When: 7pm, 4 March 2015
Where: Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Ticket: Free
More info: All are welcome! Space, however, is limited to 139 seats. The lecture is conducted in English.
For more information please contact Stan Dyer on 9746 9537 or [email protected]

From Wild Swans to the Empress Dowager Cixi – Jung Chang, in conversation

The Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong welcomes ex-red guard Dr Jung Chang to speak on “From Wild Swans to Empress Dowager Cixi”, in conversation with James Riley. At the event, the world-famous author Dr Jung Chang discusses the themes of her celebrated book, Wild Swans, leading on to talk about the subject of her most recent book, the Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China.Jung Chang (Jon Halliday)

In Wild Swans, Dr Chang’s family autobiography, she tells the story of her family, primarily during the Cultural Revolution, an extraordinary tale which led her to international fame. While Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China examines the life of one of the most important women in Chinese history, who ruled China for decades, bringing a medieval empire into the modern age. The 16-year-old Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. Her five-year-old son having succeeded to the throne, Cixi at once launched a palace coup making herself the real ruler of China, behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her male officials.

Book signing and complimentary drinks reception 6.30pm; lecture 7.30pm.

What: From Wild Swans to the Empress Dowager Cixi: Dr Jung Chang in conversation
When: 6:30pm, 29 October, 2013
Where: The Jardine Penthouse, 48/F Jardine House, One Connaught Place
How Much: $150 for Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong members and $200 non-members, tickets from [email protected]