Dr. Miracle was Georges Bizet’s first opera, written for a competition run by Jacques Offenbach in 1856. Bizet was co-winner winner with Charles Lecocq and both operas premiered in 1857.
This new production of Dr. Miracle was developed for Opera Hong Kong in partnership with HKUST as part of the 2023 French May and performed in a double bill with a new production of Donizetti’s Rita at the Shaw Auditorium on 15 May 2023.
Updated to the present day and reset in contemporary Hong Kong, this production features a new arrangement for chamber ensemble by Marco Iannelli, new dialogue in English and Cantonese, and interpolates a serenade from another early Bizet opera, Don Procopio.
Dr. Miracle tells the timeless story of a young woman in love with a boy her overbearing father thinks unsuitable — only a doctor or lawyer will do — but, despite the attractions of a vain and flirty stepmother, love finds a way through various disguises, a possibly poisoned omelette, and a fake doctor with a miracle cure.
Dr. Miracle premiered in a fairy-tale, children’s/family version at the Guangzhou Opera House on 30 September 2024 as part of the Croisements 60 Festival, which celebrated 60 years of Sino-French diplomatic relations. A further four performances (for a total of 10) were scheduled for the the New Year’s holidays.
A children’s ballet and chorus was added, along with two selections from Bizet’s Carmen, and new arrangements by Marco Iannelli of the French children’s song and nursery rhymes (“Ah! vous dirai-je, maman” — better-known as “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, “Frère Jacques”, “Au claire de la lune” and “Alouette”).
Press
Following the immersive comic operas “Rita” and “Pomme d’Api”, Guangzhou Opera House once again launched a new immersive comic opera “Le docteur Miracle” from September 30 to October 3, 2024. As one of the series of activities of the “Sino-French Cultural Spring: 60th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between China and France” in 2024, “Le docteur Miracle” brought a relaxed, humorous, energetic and romantic French fantasy to Guangzhou audiences during the National Day holiday. The play also focuses on the creation of a childhood dream atmosphere, aiming to attract young audiences and encourage parents to take their children to the theater to experience a unique audio-visual feast.
This play is not only an opera performance, but more about leading the audience back to a carefree childhood and evoking the long-lost innocence and fantasy in everyone’s heart. In recent years, Guangzhou Opera House has been committed to experimental performances that give opera art a new experience. The creative team breaks with traditional theater thinking and uses the current fashionable and interactive immersive performances to produce operas. This not only provides new vitality for opera art in today’s era, but also allows this complex and serious art genre to truly be “appreciated by both the elite and the masses” and enter the field of vision of the general audience.
The director, Peter Gordon, and the music director, Marco Iannelli, have been committed to discovering those little-known operas in recent years, which is also the main direction of Guangzhou Opera House’s new concept opera production: one “lost pearl” after another has been discovered. This series of immersive operas provides audiences with an opera viewing experience suitable for today’s “fast-paced” life through the discovery of less well-known operas, new adaptations, and various novel interactions. At the same time, through this kind of practice, the art of opera art is brought to ordinary audiences, breaking through the stereotype of opera as being effete and serious, and discovering a feasible route for popular education in the current domestic opera development path.
— Xie Zhuhan, Opera Magazine
The immersive comic opera “The Magic Doctor” is another hit work launched by Guangzhou Opera House after the country’s first immersive comic opera “Rita” and “Apple Night”. From “1.0” to “3.0”, the immersive comic opera series has been performed 45 times so far, and the popularity continues.
After watching the performance, Chen Gangyi, vice president of the School of Arts at South China University of Technology and a baritone singer, spoke highly of the musical arrangement and scene setting of the play. He said that the immersive comic opera “Le docteur Miracle” was very novel in performance and production, and the plot and jokes were smoothly connected. In terms of music, not only did it rearrange the melody in Bizet’s opera “Le docteur Miracle”, but it also cleverly incorporated clips from Bizet’s other operas, making it sound familiar and adding to the richness of the music. The most impressive thing is the form of immersive comic opera, which allows the audience to interact in a large scene, which is very interesting.
The immersive comic opera “Le docteur Miracle” has been performed 10 times so far, with an average attendance rate of 89.2%. There are many foreign faces in the audience, ranging in age from three to seventy or eighty years old, truly covering all age groups. In order to allow audiences of all ages to have an immersive experience, the comic opera “Le docteur Miracle” is based on easy-to-understand story themes and is “fairy-tale” created, making the appearance of a new type of opera “appreciated by all ages” clearer.
The opera cleverly incorporates rich local characteristics in immersive interaction, lines and costume design.. Li Zhigang, a professor at the School of Art of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, commented that the play broke the cultural boundaries in the use of multiple languages. The unique setting of French singing and Chinese narration allows the audience to overcome language barriers, feel the emotional depth of the story, and reflect cross-cultural communication and dissemination.
— Guangdong Sports and Culture Broadcasting
