Saturday saw Mr Shallot and I embark on our first true cultural experience in HK. He had bought me tickets to Aida for my birthday and this was finally the evening that it was performed. We made the trek to Tsim Sha Tsui (on the Star Ferry) as it was showing at the HK Cultural Centre. I love the Star Ferry – it’s a fairly quick old fashioned fairy service.

While I could write about the music, the cast, the scenery, the costumes and that two of the people in the orchestra have dogs that play with ours, I thought I’d tell you about the cultural experience instead.

Mr Shallot and I have attended a few operas in Sydney and have always dressed in our Sunday finest for the occasion. It seems to be a little different here. Some dressed similarly to ourselves while a vast majority were wearing their favourite Nike t-shirts and shorts with thongs, some were in jeans yet very few wore collared shirts. Interestingly, not many HK locals tend to wear shorts normally so perhaps this was their special occasion wear. Mr Shallot thinks they had tickets to the opera and popped in on their way home from shopping or on their way to somewhere else. Doesn’t explain why they dressed up in their seldom worn shorts though.

Mid-way through the first scene, we heard an electronic noise coming from behind us. Given that the orchestra was in front, it seemed quite bizarre. We turned to find the guy behind us sending a text message. Given that we had all previously been instructed to turn our phones off (in both Cantonese and English), it seemed a bit rude. His partner must have picked up on our displeasure and quickly managed to get him to stop.

The first interval saw us downstairs for a quick beverage. Tickets needed to be bought to exchange for anything from a tuna sandwich, Maltesers, nuts through to wine and those cool little piccolos of Moet. Ten minutes is not long enough for an interval to buy tickets and drink wine! However, I managed (I’m not one to waste things like that if I can help it).

Arriving back to our seats, we passed another bar area on our level so we headed there at the second interval for some champagne. It’s a tough life.

This is the first time that I’ve been to an opera where at the end of each song, there was polite clapping and also some cheering eg. Whhoooooo etc. At one stage, I expected there to be some wild whistling but it was contained to over the top cheering instead.

The other interesting thing is that while the surtitles were in English, there were also side-titles (down both sides) in Chinese.

From a cultural experience point of view, definitely had more than what I was expecting! Enjoyed the opera and it’s interesting to see how different cultures appreciate and regard it. I’m wondering what seeing an opera in Italy is like.

* Thanks to Verdi for the title to this post.