Bangkok Opera Foundation

Where Thailand's music is made, taught and shared.

In 2001, the Sucharitkul family set up a small foundation with one purpose: to give a home to the cultural and educational vision of the composer and conductor Somtow Sucharitkul. That same year, Somtow's grand opera Madana was staged under the royal patronage of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. It was meant to be a single production. It became the beginning of Thailand's first opera company, and the Bangkok Opera Foundation became the house it lives in.

Twenty-five years on, the Foundation is still a family foundation in spirit, but its reach has grown far beyond one stage. It is a registered non-profit educational and cultural foundation, with no shareholders and no dividends, so everything it receives goes back into the work. That freedom shapes everything it does. A commercial producer must ask what will sell. A foundation can ask what ought to be heard, and who deserves the chance to perform it.

On stage

The Foundation's performance division is led by Opera Siam, the only full-service opera company in ASEAN, described by Opera News as "the operatic hub of Southeast Asia." Its repertoire runs from Monteverdi to Stockhausen, from Mozart and Verdi to world premieres by Asian composers. Time and again it has gone 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 its heart 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.

Beside it stand the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Foundation's professional orchestra, and two choirs, the Calliope Chamber Choir and the Orpheus Choir.

In the classroom

What sets the Foundation apart is that it does not only present music. It raises the people who make it. Its educational division begins with the Siam Sinfonietta, the youth orchestra founded in 2010 with conductor Trisdee na Patalung. Training its players aged 12 to 25 on full scholarships through the "Somtow Method," it took first prize in Vienna just two years after it was founded and has since played Carnegie Hall three times. The Young Soloist Programme, established in 2015, trains young Thai singers for international careers and puts them straight onto Opera Siam's stage. In 2026, Young Soloists sang all three principal roles in the Thailand premiere of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. The division also runs the Foundation's Children's Choirs and the Immanuel Music School Youth Program, reaching young musicians at the very start of the journey.

Behind the scenes

None of this happens by itself. The Foundation's PR and Development departments tell its story, build its partnerships and raise the support that keeps every orchestra, choir and production going.

One artistic family

Together, these divisions form a single path. A child can sing in a children's choir, audition for the Sinfonietta or the Young Soloist Programme, train for years at no cost to their family, and one day take a principal role in front of a full house, all within one artistic family. In the 2025/26 season alone, that family gave twenty concerts and productions in twelve months, including three fully staged operas and a world premiere, for some ten thousand audience members.

Made possible by friends

The Bangkok Opera Foundation is funded by government support, corporate sponsors and the generosity of individuals who believe Thailand deserves music of the highest standard, made by Thai artists, in Thai halls.

To support the Bangkok Opera Foundation, write to us at contact@operasiam.com.