Cheap tickets jointly offered by the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) and the British Council for the recent show, “The British Musical Journey - from classical to musical”, has offered Vietnamese students in HCMC a chance to enjoy classical music – in a modern way.

HBSO has offered free or low-cost tickets of academic music performances to students for three years in order to encourage them to study and cultivate a passion for such kinds of music, said Tran Vuong Thach, director of HBSO.

These programs will help the Vietnamese youth get used to artistic music listening instead of useless entertainment activities, he added.

The British Musical Journey, held by HBSO together with the British Council, is such a program.

Mi, an RMIT student attending the show, shared, “By paying only VND80,000, which is just as much as a movie ticket, I have the opportunity to discover one of the oldest theatres in the city as well as to find out about classical musical genres, which are hardly familiar to Vietnamese students.”

Students only needed to show their student cards at the theatre’s box office in order to buy discount tickets, which gave them seats in the second tier while other tickets, costing from VND200,000-400,000, gave positions at the orchestra level and in the first tier.

Moreover, audiences could also get brochures with information about the show and others taking place from March to July.

The show began with the performance of HBSO’s choir, led by choirmaster Tran Nhat Minh, in several classical songs, such as “Halleluja” by G.F. Handel, “Ave verum” by Edward Elgar and Jellicle songs from “Cats” by Andrew Lloyd Webber. After that was the modern ballet “Dream Puzzles” by choreographers Phuc Hai and Phuc Hung.

These performances are brought to students who wish to have completely new experiences with such international kinds of music. “Before coming to the show, I though that classical was a boring genre which was just suitable for old and rich people,” said Phuong Chi, a student of Ho Chi Minh City's University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

“However, I have changed my mind now and I can only say this:  go to a classical show before giving your comments,” she added.

Other students, just like Minh Thi, another student from Ho Chi Minh City's University of Social Sciences and Humanities, who already has passion for classical music, also came to the show and gave her opinions.

“I prefer a solo soprano to perform songs from “Phantom of the Opera” instead of a group of them, and it could be more attractive if they cut down the sound of drums compared to what I heard in other shows. However, they performed very well in the “Cats” performance,” Thi shared.

According to Mi, the large demand for academic music among students is a reality. “I’m studying performance art at university. Therefore, an opportunity to enjoy a show like this helped me a lot.

However, academic music and other art forms of entertainment are so unknown to students like me because, without discount tickets, we can not afford to attend such big performances. How unfortunate!” she shared.