IT HAS BEEN two decades since the last big-scale Italian opera was staged in Penang; it is almost unthinkable now to imagine that this quiet little island would have witnessed something so grand. After all, the late Kee Phaik Cheen, whom The Wall Street Journal dubbed the “Godmother of Penang” and who had great love for the state, had griped about it being “a cultural desert” to Fumihiko Konishi, the Founder of the Texchem Group of Companies, but perhaps better known as the halal sushi magnate.
For a man of his accomplishments and social stature, Konishi is relatively low-profile; but his private residence in Taman Jesselton, an exquisite Italian villa-styled mansion called Villa Primavera, is widely admired and talked about—so much so that funnily enough, Google lists it as a tourist attraction.
