Preview: No Tenors Allowed v2.0 by Lirica Arts

Presented by Lirica Arts, join No Tenors Allowed as Singaporean opera singers Soprano Teng Xiang Ting and Baritone Martin Ng perform a vocal duel of operatic duets selected from the grand operatic repertory, staged in an intimate theatrical setting by Tang Xinxin, to express love, kinship, friendship etc, without the need …for a tenor.

The operatic tenor voice is usually associated as the romantic interest of the story. However, in “No Tenors Allowed”, the baritone combines with the soprano to come up with a series of situations of not just romantic love, but also of conspiracy, revenge, and other situations of heightened drama.

The creators were inspired by the eponymous concert series of opera duets for baritone and bass by opera superstars Thomas Hampson and Samuel Ramey in the 1990s, as well as renowned Taiwanese dance company “Cloud Gate’s founder Hwai Min Li’s 2019/2020 staging of “Everyone calls me Mimi”, a presentation of soprano/tenor scenes from Puccini’s operas, in an intimate but abstract setting which was labelled as Li Hwaimin’s “one table one chair” theatre.

No Tenors Allowed then combined the two, amalgamating it into their very own version 2.0 for the baritone and soprano.  This representation then seeks to accentuate the theatrical dynamics between the two soloists in a kaleidoscope of varying emotions by having each duet staged in a simple but intimate setting.

Narrator Shridar Mani will then string this medley of dramatic situations in a seamless narrative to lay the background and set the mood to facilitate enhanced appreciation for the music and the drama. Highlights of the programme include duets from Verdi’s La Traviata, Rigoletto, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci ,among others

No Tenors Allowed 2.0 plays on 19th September 2021 at Victoria Concert Hall. Tickets available from SISTIC