"Waitress on Top" ("La serva padrona") opera-film (2021)

"Waitress on Top", is a one-act comic opera based on "La Serva Padrona" by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi with additional music by Gaetano Donizetti. A production of the Italian Cultural Institute Hong Kong, it was filmed live at Hong Kong's iconic Peninsula Hotel in August 2021 and shown on RTHK on Christmas Day.
Starring:
Etta Fung: Serpina
Isaac Droscha: Uberto
Chen Yong: Vespone
Piano: Hsu Wei-En
Director: Jonathan Finnigan
Musical Director: Marco Iannelli
Theatrical Direction: Peter Gordon
Producer: Lorna Chan
"Waitress on Top" reimagines Pergolesi’s celebrated baroque farce “La Serva Padrona” (“The Maid Made Mistress”) in contemporary Hong Kong. Sung in Italian with spoken dialogue in English, this one-act comedy is as bubbly as a glass of prosecco and just as intoxicating.
This new “operatic musical” by Gordon and Iannelli (with story and dialogue based on a play by Peter Gordon), takes Pergolesi's sly, wry and perky arias and duets and augments them with arias from Gaetano Donizetti’s classic comic operas "Don Pasquale" and "La figlia del reggimento".
The story is set in an Italian restaurant … somewhere in Hong Kong (but it could just as easily be Shanghai, Singapore or Manchester). Uberto is the very uptight Italian boss and maitre d', while Serpina is the not-very-conscientious local young woman he's hired as waitress and who causes him no end of trouble. There's another fellow working there but we're not sure where he’s from because no one ever allows him to say anything.
This production debuted on stage at the "Italia Mia" Festival in 2019. Further details at waitressontop....
© Italian Cultural Institute, Hong Kong