Professor to Premiere Lead Role in New Opera by Vietnamese Composer

Dr. Brian Arreola, professor of voice, will premiere the lead role in a chamber opera by Vietnamese American composer P.Q. Phan and his wife, librettist Anvi Hoàng. Presented by the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, What the Horse Eats will be performed and live-streamed from the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, Indiana, on August 21 at 7 pm.

What the Horse Eats is based on a true story. The action takes place in Vietnam in 1945, a tumultuous time. Part of French Indochina, Vietnam had been occupied by the Japanese throughout World War II, and the brutal military occupation on top of years of French colonial rule devastated the country and resulted in widespread famine.

“Hung,” sung by Arreola, is a poor Vietnamese man who tends the horse of a Japanese captain. To feed his starving wife and child, Hung decides to steal some of the grain from the horse feed each day and replace it with rice husks, sacrificing his honor, the horse, and eventually his own life in an attempt to protect his family.

What the Horse Eats blends cultural and operatic aspects of Japanese Kabuki, Vietnamese Sa Mạc singing and modern Western opera into a distinctive musical expression, says Arreola, and forges a new path for contemporary opera.

“The composer and librettist, husband and wife team P.Q. Phan and Anvi Hoàng, hope to create a work that will give Asian and Asian-American opera singers opportunities to create nuanced, fully human characters, as a way to balance opera’s long history of eroticizing the ‘Oriental other.’ As an Asian-American singer I am thrilled to be able to take part in the first performance of this work. I believe Phan’s music, and his multicultural approach, represents the way forward in opera, classical music, and the arts.”

Arreola, a tenor, is a frequent performer with Opera Carolina in Charlotte as well as companies nationally. In 2013 he originated the role of “Luis” in Terence Blanchard’s jazz opera, Champion, at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and reprised the role in 2018 at New Orleans Opera. In fall 2019, he sang the role of “Pinkerton” in the IN Series production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in Washington, D.C., returning in January 2020 for the role of “Don Jose” in the company’s cabaret version of Carmen. In addition, Arreola is composing an opera about the immigration crisis in the United States, with a particular focus on the detainment and separation of migrating children and parents.

Tickets to the August 21 virtual performance of What the Horse Eats are free and available on the Buskirk-Chumley Theater website.