Saigon and its Opera House: The Indochinese center of operatic performances as the symbol of French cultural imperialism
By Phan Thi Minh Anh | June 1, 2022
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Hailed as one of the city’s main attractions and considered emblematic of alleged Saigonese identity and urban space: Saigon Opera House. Yet, how is it represented to, and perceived by, different types of people within various historical, social, and cultural contexts in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)?
In this page, we will set off to explore the significance of the Opera House as a piece of French colonial architecture in Saigon, how its usage impacted the lives of surrounding people (or not), and the ideologies that the building witnessed over the last 120 years: Same place, almost the same space, but different meanings and narratives.
Built with the purpose to stage Western theatrical performances—ideally famous French operas (opéras comiques and opérettes)—as mandated by the French colonial government, an understanding of what was and is happening inside the Saigon Opera House can only be comprehensive when complemented with the understandings of the building’s architectural façade and history.
So let us delve deeper into the material and immaterial representations of French cultural imperialism to see how ineffective the policies of assimilation and association[1] were in engendering a reception of French cultural superiority over that of the Vietnamese. We will also see how the contemporary Vietnamese municipal government maintains the colonial framing of luxury and cultural superiority by permitting certain types of activities, performances, and organizations to take place at the Opera House to the present day. And this, despite the building’s status that can be categorized as decolonized, is operating under the management of nationally mandated institution(s)!
From these two intertwined observations, I argue that the representation and reception of the Saigon Opera House building remain political, hidden underneath a façade of depoliticization and decolonization. They fluoresce between narratives of the colonial past vs. the “postcolonial” present of Saigon.
The Interior
Entering the Opera House’s inner space, we first observe a total of seats for approximately 500 people, distributed over 3 levels (Fig. 1). The interior follows the French Third Republic's “flamboyant” style, and many classicizing elements can be observed such as the coffering and pendentive upon the ceiling architecture. To the closest left and right of the view from the stage, one sees two levels of boxes (Fig. 2), presumably as designated seating for important guests to have a close-up view of the on-stage performances, similar to the architectural structures of Western opera houses (Fig. 3). The external façade of the boxes is decorated with columns of the composite order on each side and connected at the capital by an arch with a console in the middle.
Fig. 1: 2D seating plan viewed from above with 448 seats displayed
Fig. 2: View of the stage from Level 2 (caution: loud audio!)
Fig. 3: Auditorium of Palais Garnier in France, the architectural model for Saigon Opera House
The Colonial Past
In colonial Indochina, the construction of three opera houses in Saigon, Haiphong, and Hanoi from 1889 to 1910 throughout Vietnam was the French Third Republic’s statement of its mission civilisatrice, endeavoring to integrate the elite cultures of French performing arts traditions into the Indochinese and Vietnamese experiences. These buildings are testament of the idea that these important cities, and Vietnam in total, should become miniature replicas of Paris not only in the spatial but also in the cultural senses through the operations of theatre, by commissioning operatic performances and contracting opera companies from France for the leisure of the elite class, both local and from the colony, in Indochina (McClellan 2003; Wright 1991). Furthermore, operas require to be staged in opera houses, a construction which, as McClellan argues, is not native to the Indochinese lands because traditional, indigenous performing arts were often performed with traveling theater groups such as cải lương, hát bội, ca trù, etc. (cf. McClellan 2003, 142). Thus, the affirmation of French colonial presence, superiority, and mission civilisatrice over the colonized materializes both in the infrastructure of the Saigon Opera House (being part of an urban development plan) and in the immaterial cultural forms of theatrical performances.
The (ultimately) unsuccessful efforts to associate the Vietnamese to the French notion of culture, or mission civilisatrice, can be seen through the constant issues with budget allocations and audience receptivity toward performances staged at the Opera House. Firstly, the enormous budgetary spending on the construction and operations of the theaters in Saigon of “over 2.5 million francs” (Doling 2015, 4) fueled an incessant debate between the economic and cultural benefits of opera houses and opera performances in colonial Vietnam and Indochina among the colonial government officials (McClellan 2003) and was considered an “extravagance”, especially for surrounding locals who needed a dire fixing of water sanity due to dilapidated infrastructures (Wright 1991, 185).
Secondly, the content and form of, as well as accessibility to, operas were only loosely related to the context of colonial Vietnam, and thus became emblematic of the alienating access to different forms of capital (cf. Bourdieu 1986) between those of the elite vs. the mass. To those who are unfamiliar with Western operatic traditions, participation can be socially alienating: the audience is often limited to the upper and middle, or elite, classes who have the money and leisure time for these types of recreational activities, i.e., enjoyment of the “high” arts. Furthermore, the audience were presumably those who were and/or spoke French, or other Western languages such as English, German, Italian, Russian, etc., since most operas have been written in the contexts and according to the classical music traditions of these so-called civilized languages. Thus, the audience with access and familiarity to these languages in the colonial context, at the very least, were those with high economic resources, already assimilated into the French culture through their education and/or living in the expensive neighborhood of nowadays Districts 1 and 3 around the Opera House (McClellan 2003).
In addition, watching operas can be culturally alienating because of the content. For example, La Navarraise (Fig. 4)—the very first performance at Saigon Opera House's inauguration in 1900, communicates an expectation of gender roles where the woman must secure the marriage dowry for the man’s father which can be simplistically argued as operating under a contrasting culture compared to that of the Vietnamese culture in viewing the woman as a passive actor in love and marriage. Furthermore, the form, or framework, of an opera equates singing to speaking, and thus (nearly) every textual message communicated within the opera is through singing. Here, the emphasis of understanding and enjoying operas not only rests on the appreciation of the music but also on the textual content, which returns the audience back to their linguistic, not to mention musical, comprehension.
Fig. 4: Premier poster featuring Emma Calvé as Anita, the opera's heroine
The failure of the policy of association through the Saigon Opera House is ultimately evidenced by how rarely the traces of Vietnamese musicians and performers participating in the artistic-cultural exchange with the French performing arts of the scene are seen in scholarly resources or national archival documents. There are only few accounts of Saigon’s first operatic production being Jacques Offenbach’s Les Deux Aveugles (Pasler 2012) but without background information on the constituting performers. This further supports McClellan’s argument (2003) that the French performing arts taking place within Saigon Opera House were embedded in imperialism and colonialism policies, pushing the French mission civilisatrice agenda through importing Western cultural products to Indochina while simultaneously limiting indigenous participation, thereby creating a narrative of elitism and cultural superiority of the French over the Vietnamese. In addition, the economic model of top-down subsidization of the French colonial government towards the operations of the opera houses across Vietnam ensured tight control and thus hampered spontaneous creativity (yamomo 2017). In other words, French-imported performing arts became a space of discriminating power (im)balances between the colonizing vs. the colonized. Overall, these narratives are eventually rather examples of assimilation pressure on local elites than forms of a general association policy.
Fig. 5: Entrance to the Saigon Opera House with two caryatids
Fig. 6: A cải lương performance staged at the 1931 Colonial Expo in Paris
Now, such French gatekeeping efforts of their arts and cultures linked to their own ideals of mission civilisatrice help to complement the understanding of Saigon Opera House’s architectural façade: namely, the impression[2] of a seemingly closed-off, unwelcoming façade in its placement of two enormous caryatids guarding off the main entrance, which is altogether placed high off above the ground upon horizontally contracting stair-steps (Fig. 5).
Within such context, still there exists one of the rare examples of a synthesis between Western and local Vietnamese performing arts with Nguyễn Ngọc Cương, or Tư Cương, who in 1938 had proposed a project to establish a conservatory for Annamese classical theater in Saigon (VNAII, file 38355). Tư Cương was an intellectual and theatrical artist, who is said to have brought[3] the traditional performing arts of cải lương (Fig. 6) to its prime in Southern Vietnam during the 1925–1945 period after his theater education in France (Luan 2018). Here, the synthesis might have been able to take place because Tư Cương, although submerged into French education and arguably favoring the ways of thinking learned abroad over those of the locals[4], understood the Vietnamese context more than the French and did not approach cultural integration as a violent imposition of the colonial government. From this example, I further argue that there is a certain alienation and disparage in the representation and reception of possible cultural exchange between the French operatic performances with the Vietnamese that continues, in part, to the present day.
The “Postcolonial” Present
In Ho Chi Minh City of 2022, there are and have been two organizations staging the majority of performances at the Saigon Opera House: the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) (Fig. 7) and the Lune Production (Fig. 8). The former is a city-funded and mandated orchestra whereas the latter is a private joint-stock company that specializes in staging and performing cultural shows based on a hybrid of contemporary dance and circus. These two organizations are mostly membered by Vietnamese working and based in Ho Chi Minh City.
By examining the different framings of these two organizations towards their mission and cultural products—HBSO in bringing classical music closer to the public and Lune Production in “inspiring Vietnamese culture to the world through art performances” (Lune Production n.d.), it can be observed that both narratives present themselves as simultaneously accessible and elitist. This oxymoron can be understood as an expression of the framing process in which each organization both invites and motivates its target audience to purchase its cultural products. All in all, this further shed light on how constant conflicts and negotiations have always been present at the intersection of the economic vs. cultural values regarding performing arts from the times of French colonialization of Indochina into 21st century Vietnam.
Firstly, why would the process of targeting an audience give rise to a dual framing of accessibility and superiority? Here, the relationship between the framing of inviting and motivating becomes potentially conflictual, especially when viewed from an economic point of view: a potential customer needs to feel invited by a reception and expectation that the purchase of a product is beneficial and fulfills purposes or wants. One of the most common ways to motivate customers to experiment with a new product is to persuade them that the product provides more value both in monetary terms and compared to previous choices already familiar to the customers.
Coming back to the argument regarding the narratives of HBSO and Lune Production, since performing arts are uncommon and expensive forms of entertainment for the masses in Vietnam (and arguably in all places of the world), these organizations make money with the representations of performing arts as experiences of becoming and being cultured (which can be understood not only in the sense of the French mission civilisatrice but Pierre Bourdieu’s [1986] cultural capital as well). With HBSO performing Western classical music and Lune Production staged by people who have foreign, mostly Western, education and/or backgrounds, these forms of entertainment are greatly influenced by Western representations and ways of thinking, even with a content centered on the Vietnamese and within-border ethnic minorities cultures in the case of Lune Production. In the case of Lune Production, there is even the double responsibility of having to represent the cultures within the borders of Vietnam under both familiar and unfamiliar—exoticized to an extent—lights and to evaluate the effectiveness of their framing(s) in comparison with the possible reception(s) of their target audience—mainly traveling foreigners curiously exploring residual and/or conflicting images and concepts of the Orient (cf. Edward Said 1978) in the context of contemporary Ho Chi Minh City/Vietnam.
Fig. 7: "A Night of Mozart" tickets, brochure, and program leaflet
Fig. 8: Lune Production promotion poster placed right of the entrance of Saigon Opera House on 12 March 2022
Secondly, however, the constant negotiations and conflicts between framings of the Saigon Opera House are not only facilitated by the need of HBSO and Lune Production to market their products but also affected by the occasional activities and events taking place in and outside of the Saigon Opera House besides those of the two main companies. Often, these seasonal occurrences take advantage of, yet also compromise with, the overall framings of luxuriousness, foreignness, and elitism exhibited by the Saigon Opera House as an architectural structure as well as a space to organize experiences of those inside and outside.
A striking recent example is Ciné Gucci, a fashion event that took place on the evening of 13 April 2022. Branded as 1 out of 8 total fashion showcases, authorized by the haute culture fashion brand Gucci, to take place over the world, the event served as evidence to the reasoning that the Vietnamese fashion industry is increasingly internationally recognized. Activities included a fashion walk, musical performances, press shootings, etc. with around only 100 top celebrities and business(wo)men invited. For the event, the façade of the Opera House had been added with decorations and lighting that resembled the bombastically colorful, in-your-face Hollywood exterior of 1920s American cinema houses. For those looking more careful the emptiness behind the façade of these clownish jumble of neon performances and walking sticks of ever-changing (environmentally damaging!) clothing trends became immediately obvious.
As an event taking place at the Saigon Opera House, Ciné Gucci took advantage of the building’s association with high cultures — a framing born out of and maintained through classicizing elements — originally set in place by the French colonial government — of the architecture and operatic performances until today. In addition, the portrayal of the event adds a sense of on-trend modernity to the building’s usual framings, which then complements the nature of the fashion industry as always looking for extravagant stage shows and constantly discarding old styles for the new. In the end, however, the many framings of both the event and the building, based on its appearance and usage, express self-conflict, ineffectiveness, and out-of-touch-ness. In other words, the usage of the Saigon Opera House for the Ciné Gucci event feels incongruous because it is not the purpose of the building to do so.
Furthermore, the failure of Ciné Gucci to utilize the framings of the Saigon Opera House sheds light on how the Vietnamese municipal/national government has made use of the framings of the past as a statement of advancements of the city-nation of the present. Here, a small revisit to the history of the Saigon Opera House after the French occupation reminds us of not only how the building receded performing operas due to low demands but was used as the National Assembly of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) government around 1956. During the 1940s, most of the building’s classicizing elements such as the architectural reliefs, sculpture, and the two column-statues or caryatids at the entrance were removed, leaving only the mural (Fig. 9) presumably untouched by being entirely covered (Fig. 10). The result was something of the Art Deco style, considered more dynamic and younger than the Baroque and/or Neoclassical style(s) to appeal to the youth of Saigon[5]. Afterward, by using the building as its National Assembly, the RVN arguably decolonized it by replacing the political framings of the colonial government with their own political framings in the race to pit themselves as the rightful leaders of South Vietnam against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
Fig. 9: Beaux-Arts mural on the Opera House's arch
Fig. 10: "Parliament sleeps here"
With the DRV becoming the one-party government of the nation until the present day as the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), several restoration projects again depoliticized the building from its associations with the French colonial government and especially RVN. Of notice is the removal of war statues, with soldiers pointing their gun directly at the Opera House, in front of the building[6]. Overall, the depoliticization process consisted of removing the reminders of how the building was embedded in the civil North-South conflict. Consequently, the building was again used as a theater, and its appearance was restored with the Greco-Roman classicizing elements on its exterior and interior[7]. In other words, by restoring the building to its original appearance that had been built by the French colonizers, the contemporary Vietnamese government not only elevated its rule over the RVN regime of South Vietnam (which remains distant only in memories and old photos) but also reframed, and degraded, French colonial architecture to the status of a little more than a cultural artifact. Thus, French colonial architecture, as remnants of French failed conquest in contemporary Vietnam, enriches and enhances the so-called images of urban Saigon and Saigonese identity. Simultaneously, French colonial architecture is deliberately made invisible in its origins as products made by the French colonizers of the past.
What now?
There exist multiple framings to the Saigon Opera House that can be simultaneously ambiguous and conflicting: a framing that is inherent in the structure—French colonial architecture overall constitutes the integral process of mission civilisatrice, French colonizing project of Indochina. This becomes visible through the learning of the different purposes the building has/had been used—from staging French operas or cải lương, to headquartering the National Assembly, to again performing classical music and performing arts; and it is instituted by the reception of the people toward the building as part of Saigon—through official history textbooks and current usage. Thus, the space becomes taken-for-granted and blends into the living-scape of surrounding experiences. In the end, the negotiation of all these complex framings is meant to orient the many possible receptions—for example, evoking nationalistic pride for the Vietnamese and naïve curiosity among the foreigners—to see Saigon as a city with rich cultural, political, and even economic significance. A framing that fits in with the national narrative of the victorious and thriving colonized over the colonizers and evidence that underneath the projects to decolonize and depoliticize the Saigon Opera House is another political narrative/propaganda written by the contemporary government(s).
The multi-ambiguities that remain even after careful research into the building through different times in history arguably express the effective efforts of the municipal and/or national government in framing and reframing Saigon Opera House. What remains is to ask about the extent of intentionality for these framings. To what degree have municipal and/or national governmental institutions masked, and are still masking, their efforts of decolonizing and depoliticizing this piece of the French colonial architecture? How do these (re)framings re-constitute these buildings as eminent to the identity of Saigon, a Vietnamese city? And is it not a super wicked way to do so?
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Footnotes
[1] For an in-depth discussion of French policies for colonialism in Indochina, see Betts, Raymond F. 1961. Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory 1890-1914. New York City: Columbia University Press.
Also, see the discussion on French Assimilation/Association policies and mission civilisatrice through banknotes of Banque de L’Indochine in this online exhibition.
[2] I am grateful to Dr Elisabeth Günther for this impression in the discussion after our class presentation on the Saigon Opera House on 23 March 2022.
[3] It seems from referencing Luan (2018) that Tư Cương invented the artform by combining his experience of French and Vietnamese theatrical performances, especially hát bội, with his education in France, specializing on theaters. More research into the general musical and performing arts scene in colonial Indochina, either a combination of or separately Vietnamese or French, is needed. However, this exceeds the scope of the perspective of what was and is taking place inside the Saigon Opera House.
[4] Observable through a quote by Tư Cương on fellow cải lương artists in Vietnam:
“Soạn giả xứ mình có nhiều người tài như Sáu Hải nhưng vì trình độ văn hóa còn kém cỏi, không đọc được sách báo hữu ích của ngoại quốc như L’illustration Théâtre thì làm sao khai thác, sáng tạo thêm được những cái hay, cái đẹp mới lạ theo trào lưu tiến hóa của sân khấu quốc tế và xưa nay chỉ quanh quẩn trong phạm vi truyện Tàu, các tuồng và tiểu thuyết được phiên dịch ra Việt ngữ. Hoặc xem để phóng tác bừa bãi thiếu phương pháp và kỹ thuật của một ngòi bút chuyên nghiệp viết tuồng” (Luan 2018, 5).
Loosely translated as:
“There are many talented authors of our nation like Sáu Hải but because of their incompetent cultural understandings, unable to read useful foreign books and newspapers such as L’illustration Théâtre, how could they make use of and create stranger beauties following how international theaters are constantly evolving. They have only ever been wandering within the proximity of Chinese stories, plays and novels that are translated into Vietnamese. Or randomly improvising without the techniques and methods of a professional writer writing plays.”
[5] See the discussion on how the Opera House’s façade corresponded to different intentions, styles, and the question of architectural authenticity.
[6] See the discussion on how the presence or removal of statues, including those in front of the Opera House, can be contextualized according to three periods of political upheavals in Saigon from 1859 till now.
[7] I am grateful to Prof Dr Sven Günther for this suggestion in the discussion after our class presentation on the Saigon Opera House on 23 March 2022.
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References
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson, 241–58. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Doling, Tim. 2015. “Old Saigon Building of the Week – Saigon Municipal Theatre, 1900.” HISTORIC VIETNAM. Last modified March 16, 2015 (19 March 2022).
Luận, Phạm Công. 2018. “100 năm ra đời sân khấu cải lương – Nguyễn Ngọc Cương, người khai sáng.”. TuoiTre.vn. Last modified February 13, 2018 (8 May 2022).
Lune Production. n.d. “About Lune Production.” Last modified n/a (10 April 2022).
McClellan, Michael. 2003. “Performing Empire: Opera in Colonial Hanoi.” Journal of Musicological Research 22, nos. 1-2: 135-66, doi: 10.1080/01411890305920.
Pasler, Jann. 2012. “Friendship and Music in Indochina". In Camille Saint-Saëns and His World, edited by Jann Pasler, 184-90. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York City: Pantheon Books.
Vietnam National Archives II [VNAII] (2 Le Duan, District 1, HCMC). “Dossier relatif au projet de création d’un conservatoire pour l’enseignment du théâtre classique annamite par M. Nguyễn Ngọc Cương, Directeur de Troupe théâtrale année 1938,” file 38355 (22 March 2022).
Wright, Gwendolyn. 1991. The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
yamomo, meLê. 2017. “Global Currents, Musical Streams: European Opera in Colonial Southeast Asia”. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 44, no. 1: 54–74, doi: 10.1177/1748372717741440.