Everyday feels like once in a lifetime at Hong Kong Disneyland. But on January 10th, the sentiment took on new meaning as the park honoured its 20th anniversary with a celebratory concert brimming with the inexplicable magic of Disney. As night fell across the park, I made my way to the Castle of Magical Dreams to join hundreds of others for the “Disney Legend Live in Concert” show. All around, clinking glasses of champagne could be heard as we took to our seats at the foot of the castle’s moat. The strings ensemble from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Disneyland Band stationed themselves at the castle grounds above us, and Maestro Gerard Salonga led them in an opening of “A Whole New World”. As the chorus came to a crescendo, the legendary Lea Salonga emerged from the grounds, rising to the stage with a regal wave and a beaming smile. Our Disney Legend had arrived.
For three consecutive years, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort has collaborated with numerous performers for their “Disney Live in Concert!” series, with names like renowned pianist Lang Lang, Jay Fung, and Gin Lee among them. For this remarkable milestone however, the stars aligned in miraculous ways to reunite the park with Tony award-winning Filipino singer and Broadway icon Lea Salonga. “This was a perfect opportunity because she was there when we opened our park in 2005, she’s a massive inspiration to us all,” said Creative Director of Entertainment at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Christie Evangelisto. “We want [the audience] to think about everything that makes our princesses so special: courage, bravery, aspiration, chasing your dreams, following your passion, being open to everything. Everything that also is very much what Lea is all about.”
On Valentine’s Day 35 years ago, Salonga recorded “A Whole New World” for Aladdin, and six years later, lent her voice to Mulan’s heart song, “Reflection”. To hear her sing both live that night, along with 11 other tracks from the Disney Princess songbook, was to be truly transported into a whole new world. Each performance took us on a sensorial magic carpet ride, with gorgeous thematic projections that transformed the castle facade, animated fountains choreographed in perfect harmony to the music, a grand pyrotechnic display, and of course, the mind-altering appearance of five Disney Princesses and a Queen fluttering alongside Salonga herself.
(From left) Christie Evangelisto, Creative Director, Entertainment, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort; Lea Salonga; and Jeffrey RM Garcia, Show Director, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort
Photo: Courtesy of Hong Kong Disneyland Resort
It was a remarkable undertaking that posed the only challenge of “just satisfying our ambitions” Evangelisto had said, because with Disney (and its near infinite resources at your fingertips), anything is possible. “Our creative brains are very greedy and large, and we always want to do the most with everything,” she explained. “I would love to create, 12 different versions of this concert, but we can only create one.” And the one could not have been more perfect.
But as if the concert wasn’t enough of a pinch-me moment, I had the opportunity the night before to speak to Salonga herself. We were sat in the Kingdom Club Cinderella Suite at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel—very serendipitous, I would later learn—me on a rather nice chair, and Salonga on a sofa that resembled the Fairy Godmother’s pumpkin coach. It was a charming picture, cute even, but as we chatted that sofa had morphed into something more akin to a throne. Salonga was graceful but never demure, professional but full of heart, and most of all, unforgivingly enthusiastic. She was human—and a remarkable one, yes—but she had without a doubt the soul of a Disney Princess.
“Ah! That was so many years ago,” said Salonga. I had asked what she remembered from being at the park’s grand opening two decades ago, and immediately a thought had sprung to mind. “I was actually pregnant, and I didn’t know. But when I was here, I did all of the things in the park after the show. We were like, “Let’s go to Space Mountain!” And so I did it. And I think I did it twice.”
“The general public wasn’t in the park, it was just the guests for the opening and all the performers, so everybody had free reign of the park. I was already in my street clothes, I still had my makeup on and I thought ‘We’re going to Space Mountain… and we’re doing it again!’ I tell my son this now, and he hates Space Mountain.” She recalled the big day fondly, her distinctive laughter punctuating every shared detail. For the next half an hour, that joy and candour persisted as Salonga reminisced about her early days in Broadway, paid tribute to a dear friend, and reflected on the Disney legacy.
You first performed at Hong Kong Disneyland during their grand opening and now you’re back to sing at their 20th anniversary. What are some of the emotions you’re experiencing?
The show director of Hong Kong Disneyland, Bobby Garcia, he and I were such good friends for a long time. He passed away in December of 2024 and so, while I was on tour in Canada and in the US, I had a stop in Vancouver and spent time with his sister. I went to his grave site, and she crafted the perfect Bobby day for me. We went to his favourite spots in Vancouver. We went to this market that he loved, the theatre where he directed, we ordered Chinese food from his favourite restaurant. We just had a Bobby day. We worked together on opening the park, so to be in the park 20 years later, it’s like I get to sort of pay tribute again to my good friend. It’s nice to be able to come back to this very special place and kind of feel where my friend had worked for so long, and to be able to celebrate the park being here for 20 years. I’ve had so many friends come and go, people who’ve been working in the park in different capacities.
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You touched on this a little just now, that Disney is not only a culturally significant institution, but its a real community. As a Disney Legend, what has been the most magical aspect of being a part of this whole phenomenon?
The phenomenon is multi-generational, and I think that’s part of what makes the magic for the performers. For me personally, it’s that you are the recipient of someone paying something forward. Case in point, the very, very original Cinderella is Ilene Woods; she has since passed away, but she created that iconic character and that voice. Just that alto, that beautiful resonant tone, it’s so recognisable with anybody that ever saw the Cinderalla movie. Hers was the voice I listened to when I was a child. That was the storybook tape that I played over and over and over again as a four, five year old. And it was the one tape that survived, because I saw the shells of the other cassettes and everything was like… “Why doesn’t this not sound great?” Pinocchio died. Dumbo kind of hung on, but Cinderella was the most resilient. So I memorised “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” when I was a tiny, tiny kid. Then fast forward, I get to do this Disney Princess voice with Aladdin, and later on, with Mulan.
Now there are younger actresses getting to provide these magical voices for other characters. Somebody else is going to have to sing for me when I’m gone, because Jasmine isn’t going to die. None of these characters will ever disappear into the ether. They will remain to inspire and bring happiness and joy to another generation of kids. It’s just going to keep on going and going and going. They are eternal. So in a way, every single actor that has ever done a voice for Disney has achieved immortality. Ilene most definitely has. Anyone that’s ever done Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, any of those characters—they’re never going to die. And the Disney die-hards will do their research and find out, “Who was the person who did this voice in 1945? In the 70s? In the 2000s?” It’s proper legacy. So after I have left this mortal coil *laughs* I know it sounds grim but I will leave something behind, and somebody else will pick it up and keep it going, which is a wonderful thing to think about.
And this show at HKDL pays tribute to that exact undying spirit of Disney Princesses. What would the characteristics and values of your ideal princess be? What’s her message to the world?
We are now in 2026, so what does that mean? I post a gajillion Instagram stories about female empowerment and courage, and we are decentring men in 2026! But you know, to put this in proper Disney terms, it’s these characters, especially the ones that have come later, the ones like Mulan. She’s flawed and trying to figure her way through society, through life, expectations She realises that she doesn’t fit into this mould that society already has predetermined for her, so she’s trying to find another way to bring honour to her family and to her country. So, as far as the ideal Disney princess, she embodies so many qualities that I would place in the ideal for me because she isn’t perfect. We see her riding a horse and her hair is a mess, she’s got hay in her hair. There are things about her that are imperfect which add to her charm—and that make her perfect. It’s great for young women and young girls to see that she’s flawed, she is weird, she is not perfectly graceful. She’s graceful when she’s holding a sword though, which is, ugh! So good! I think for me, she is the perfect one.
But I also do like when Rapunzel goes into psychosis when she first escapes the tower! Because again, anytime we see any of these princesses start off as imperfect and anxious and worried, that mirrors a lot of what many young women are also trying to figure out. We’re trying to figure out who we are. We’re trying to look for mirrors of strength and inspiration to help us to move forward and figure out how we fit into this world.
You mentioned in previous interviews that you grew up in an artistic family. Who or what as your introduction to singing, musicals and theatre?
I think I was just singing at a family party at our house, but we lived in the province, which is maybe a couple of hours away from the capital, Manila, so everybody had to travel quite a bit to get to our house. So I’m singing for my relatives, and at the time one of them was very active with a musical theatre company in Manila. She was telling my mom, “Auntie, you have to bring her to audition for this show The King and I, they’re looking for children, bring her.” It was not would she be interested in..? No, it was a command , it was not a request. So my mom brought me to the auditions, and that was my entry [into the theatre world]. I can’t remember when I first saw The Sound of Music, for example, but I remember hearing the film soundtrack around our house and my audition song for The King and I was “Do Re Mi”. So I’m sure that I had Julie Andrews ad nauseum in my house. I guess [that kind of music] was just always playing, so it wasn’t even something I was thinking about.
Over the years, you have been incredibly consistent with work on the stage, the screen, and with concert tours. Has it ever felt like just work?
No. I mean, when I’m doing a show in the West End or on Broadway it’s eight shows a week. And there are some times when it’s the eighth show of the week and I get tired mentally. Like, “What are the lyrics of that song? What just came out of my mouth?” It’s almost like you can see the wrong lyric coming out of your mouth and you can’t… get it back. So that happens. But it never feels like a slog. There’s never this feeling of dread. There’s always, no matter how exhausted I feel, so much pleasure in coming to work and in seeing familiar faces, the people I see on stage. I just feel so lucky to be doing what it is I love and making a living out of it. When Josh, my manager, hands me our schedule, I’m like, “Hooray!” And when I see a familiar city or a city where I know family is at, then, it clocks in. “Oh, this is so nice. I get to visit with Auntie and Uncle this or I’ll get to visit some friends, and we’ll schedule a dinner.” It’s great that it also works out with my social calendar *laughs*
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Is there anything you actively do to stay connected to that passion for performing?
No, I just really, really love it. I don’t know when it really clicked, because when I was initially doing Miss Saigon, when I was 18, 19, 20-years-old, that’s when it felt like, “When is this gonna end?” Because it was the very first long contract I had; I don’t think I ever did a show for as long as that. It was a year and three months in London, and then another year pretty much immediately after in New York. So I was so burned out by the end of the New York contract. It was a lot for somebody that young. But when I went back to the show in 1999 seven years after I had initially left it, I had gained technique, life experience, grown up, had more work under my belt. So when I went back, I was like, “Why didn’t anybody tell me this was fun?!” The perspective had changed because who I was as a person was different, and I really looked forward to going to work in that particular show, like every single time. I hated being off. And over the course of the run—from 1991 to at that point, it was like eight years on Broadway—the cast found ways to make it interesting and fun, a place that you wanted to go to work at. There were backgammon tournaments and I learned how to play backstage at Miss Saigon. There were chess tournaments and the wardrobe department, the hairdressers’ department, going to other peoples’ dressing rooms… It just felt like being in a college dorm. I don’t know what that’s like because I’ve never done the college dorm thing, but it was sincerely the most fun I had.
I was only slated to stay for four months. So when Cameron Mackintosh, who produced the show asked “Do you mind staying an extra month?” I was like “No! This is fun.” So they announced that I was gonna stay, and then they announced that I was gonna do the Philippines, and then they announced that I was gonna come back for the last four weeks of the Broadway run. So everything all worked out, it just felt like such a great place to work and a wonderful community. But I needed time away from the show. I needed the seven years away to really get back into it again.
What do the slower, quieter moments of your life look like? Any recent casual hobbies you’ve picked up?
Usually killing something on a video game *laughs* I just finished and I’ve already done two rounds of this game because I love it so much: Ghost of Yotei. Asian female protagonist. There’s also Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and there are two heroes. One is I think an African slave that the Portuguese priests brought with them to Japan, and then the other one is a Japanese assassin woman. So this is what I do in my spare time. But I also like to bake. I like the exactness of following a recipe the first time, and then thinking “How can I tweak this to make it more yummy for me?” I like doing the chocolate chip with walnut cookies, inspired by Levain. So I’m always searching online for recipes and trying them out.
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Alyanna Raissa J. PayosCredit
Lead image: Courtesy of Hong Kong Disneyland
