Taiwan put on Turandot with 260 artists, 1,800 audience
mainpress release for tonight’s show:
Taiwan’s globally acclaimed success in containing the COVID-19 pandemic enters a new phase today as Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), stages Giacomo Puccini’s grandest opera Turandot, featuring 260 singers and musicians performing in front of 1800 live audience members. The performance is set to become the largest-scale indoor public performance since the outbreak of the pandemic. The international co-production between Weiwuying and Deutsche Oper am Rhein (German) will be livestreamed on Weiwuying’s website to a worldwide audience.
CHIEN Wen-pin, General and Artistic Director of National Kaohsiung Center of the Arts (Weiwuying), said, ‘The musicians and the entire production team at Weiwuying have worked tirelessly to meet Taiwan’s stringent and exemplary COVID-compliant requirements. When all tickets for the two scheduled performances on 28 and 30 August sold out, we decided to stream the performance live for our many friends in at home and overseas.’
There has been months without local infection in Taiwan. Since June the National Concert Hall in Taipei with more than 2000 seats has been consistently holding sold-out concerts. Now 2 months passed, Taiwan still sees no local infection. This is an encouraging sign to how concerts could proceed with excellent public health guidelines and effort.
Donald Trump is a self-consumed, incompetent idiot.
There.
I said it.
Because Taiwan moved quickly when the virus appeared, there has been little disruption on the island apart from the mandatory wearing of masks and hand sanitizing. When I visited in mid-February, there was already rigorous testing at the airport for all arriving passengers before the island closed to international flights. No local lock lockdowns though. Its government took the sort of quick action all countries should have done – and didn’t! Now the world suffers!