Continuing on the setbacks brought from 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic, KLCO was forced to postpone Carmen once again in 2021. However, while life was stuck in a semi-virtual setting, we still wanted to do something for our opera community of singers, musicians, educators, and of course our audiences who have been deprived of opera for almost 2 years at that point.
This festival was also in aid of United Sikhs Malaysia's Home Covid Care which provided Malaysian Covid-19 patients oxygen concentrators, pulse oximeters and rations, which were sorely needed at the time. All our sessions were held free-of-charge and all donations collected was channeled directly to United Sikhs Malaysia.
A national virtual operatic singing competition was also held in conjunction with the festival, which encouraged participants ages 16-35 to showcase their operatic singing skills from home. We received many promising videos from all our participants and our judges had fruitful deliberations over the participants.
All in all, it was a very engaging festival with performances, lectures, talks and panels with international guests.
