Opera Siam
under the BANGKOK OPERA FOUNDATION
In 2001, the curtain rose on Madana, a grand opera by the Thai composer Somtow Sucharitkul, performed under the royal patronage of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. It was meant to be a single production, one bold attempt to prove that a Thai story could be told in the language of Western opera, and that a Thai audience would come to hear it. They came. What was meant to be a single evening became the beginning of Thailand’s first opera company.
Twenty-five years on, Opera Siam is the only full-service opera company in ASEAN, described by Opera News as “the operatic hub of Southeast Asia.” Its repertoire runs from the madrigals of Monteverdi to the avant-garde of Stockhausen, from Mozart and Verdi to world premieres by Asian composers. Time and again it has been the company that goes first: Das Rheingold in 2006 was the first Wagner opera ever staged in Southeast Asia, followed by the region’s first productions of Thaïs, The Turn of the Screw and Bluebeard’s Castle. At the heart of its work stands DasJati, Somtow’s cycle of ten operas on the Ten Lives of the Buddha, which has carried Thai stories to Houston, Brno, Prague and Bayreuth.
Opera Siam belongs to no one. It is part of the Bangkok Opera Foundation, a registered non-profit with no shareholders and no dividends, so everything it receives goes back into the work. A commercial producer must ask what will sell; a foundation can ask what ought to be heard. Under its roof lives a family of ensembles: the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Siam Sinfonietta youth orchestra, the Calliope Choir and the Young Soloist Programme. Together they take a young Thai musician from a first audition, through years of fully funded training, to a principal role in front of a full house.
In the 2025/26 season alone, that meant twenty concerts and productions in twelve months, three fully staged operas, a world premiere and some ten thousand audience members, all made possible by friends who believe Thailand deserves opera of the highest standard, made by Thai artists, in Thai halls.
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