Don’t you dare close your eyes! Broadway legend and the singing voice of Disney’s Jasmine (and Mulan), Lea Salonga, will be performing with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in July.
For two nights only, the Filipina powerhouse will take the stage at the Hong Kong Cultural Center in Tsim Sha Tsui. Salonga was last in Hong Kong in 2016, when her concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic were sold out.
Salonga originated the role of Kim in the 1989 musical Miss Saigon — an updated version of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly set during the Vietnam War — when she was just 17 years old. She won a Tony award for the role, becoming the first Asian woman to do so.
After that she went on to play the role of Éponine in the Broadway production of Les Misérables. She would return to the Great White Way to star in a musical about Japanese internment camps called Allegiance, and a Broadway revival of Once On This Island.
More recently, Salonga played Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd — the smash musical about a murderous barber whose victims are served up to patrons at Lovett’s pie shop — in Coconuts HK‘s sister city (and her own hometown) Manila.
But non-Broadway nerds are more likely to know Salonga as the singing voice of, not one, but two Disney heroines: Aladdin‘s Princess Jasmine, and Mulan.
For her July concerts, Salonga will be performing songs from Miss Saigon, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and some Disney classics from the likes of Mulan and Frozen.
Tickets range from HK$480 to HK$780, and are available via Ticketflap.
