The delightfully frivolous Il Segreto di Susanna is an intimate and approachable one act comic opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari from 1909.
Hong Kong, between the Wars: Susanna and Gil have been married for just a month. It’s a liaison that Gil’s social set doesn’t approve of, leading to a certain amount of unease between the newlyweds. To make things worse, societal disapproval of smoking leads Gil to believe, when he smells cigarette smoke, that his new bride Susanna is having an affair because she couldn’t possibly be smoking herself. There can be no other explanation, but Susanna’s secret (her “segreto”) is that she’ll do whatever she wants, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
This production for the Dante Alighieri Society and co-presented by the Asia Society, adapted and reset in Hong Kong during the “roaring ’20s”, is the first time (as far as we know) that the opera has been performed in the city.
Listen to the performance
Watch “O gioia, le nube leggera”
