Bangkok Youth Opera Festival returns with three works this August 15-22

This August, Bangkok Youth Opera presents a radical production of Gluck's masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice, the reform ballet Don Juan and Donizetti's Don Pasquale, running August 15-22 at the Studio on the fourth floor of BACC. Three works, one week, and every last note handled by young people. 

It plays out in the Studio, a black-box space you reach by escalator past the gallery shops and coffee stands, so the whole thing stays close and intimate rather than grand. That's part of the appeal. But the productions themselves are where things get gloriously strange. Old myth meets new anxiety, sung and played and run by people who refuse to wait their turn.

The line-up:

1. Orfeo ed Euridice: The ancient myth of a musician who follows his beloved down to the land of the dead. Darren Royston's staging transports Orpheus across time and dimensions on his odyssey to bring back Eurydice, reimagining that descent through projection mapping, with holograms glitching across the walls of the room. The catch: he can never glance back at her until they reach the world of the living. You already know how well that tends to go.

2. Don Juan: The reform ballet that arrived just before Gluck's opera in 1762. A story of desire that ignores every consequence until no warnings remain, it sets 'love' in all its shapes side by side – Orpheus's undying loyalty against Don Juan's bottomless appetite. Two very different men, one bill, and a smart bit of programming that lets you watch the same feeling play out in opposite directions.

3. Don Pasquale: The comedy, and a proper coup. Donizetti's romp finally gets its long-overdue Thailand premiere, with Royston – who staged it to critical acclaim in the UK – relocating the action from 19th-century Rome to present-day Bangkok. Don Pasquale becomes a middle-aged Chinese man determined to teach his game-addicted nephew, Ernesto, a lesson, all of it wrapped in AI worries and social-media pressure. Expect a lot of laughter and a plot that lands a little too close to home.

Musical director and conductor Jorn Yasavudhi holds the score together while Royston directs and choreographs.

Orfeo ed Euridice and Don Juan run on August 15 (5.30pm), August 20 (6pm) and August 22 (5.30pm). Don Pasquale plays August 16 (5.30pm) and August 21 (6pm). Both at the Studio, 4th Floor, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. 

Tickets are B1,200 general, B600 for students with ID. Book here: https://forms.gle/RFkXYpTERH5bYRZc8 (Orfeo ed Euridice and Don Juan) and https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfylS3j4tSKZ800asGVXzV6nI9xjVI5QFrBU1dgLsKCzMXJ2g/viewform?usp=send_form (Don Pasquale).