These days, if one were
to ask Hanoians, “Which of the city’s architectural works do you most admire?”,
nine out of ten would probably respond, “The Opera House.” Since its inauguration nearly 100 years ago,
this building has stood by to witness
every one of the city’s historical events, afforded “front row seats”
thanks to its prime central location. One out of ten respondents, however,
would be hesitant to recognize the Opera House because of the following issue:
the Opera House was built during the colonial period, following the French
Classical style of 19th century, a structure forced upon a city under the
imperial bootheel.
But until it is joined in
the near future by the Thang Long Theater, designed by one of the most renowned
contemporary architects, the older, smaller Opera House will retain its
striking prominence in the Hanoian’s inner urban map. If you’re getting
married, you’ll take glamour shots in front of the Opera House. You can sit
beneath the stars in the courtyard of the Opera House, drinking a cup of
Highlands Coffee. If you want to drop a lot of bills, go for a bite at
Nineteen11 restaurant in the Opera House’s lower level, named for its opening
year. Musical rallies and public celebrations are staged in front of the Opera
House. At the edge of nearby Hoan Kiem Lake, one can find the intersection of a
wide boulevard leading to the Opera House. This stretch of cityscape may be one
of Hanoi’s most thoroughly transformed in terms of architectural heritage, as
it was once almost entirely devoted to traditional temples of worship.
Originally, the land was recognized as a commons between a number of small
villages, whose residents would gather there to stage cultural festivities: a
role quite appropriately adopted by the Opera House within the cultural life of
modern Hanoi. To take in a performance at the Opera House, one usually observes
the formalities of such an occasion in the Western style, donning a tuxedo and
stuffing oneself into a velvet seat, just as the “woman who went to hear the
singers of Đặng village,” from Nguyễn Bính’s poem [1], was
similarly dressed to the nines back in that earlier day, well aware that such
an event was a rare and special episode in her life.
The Hanoi Opera House on postcard in early 20th century.
It is the architecture of the Opera House itself, however, that exerts its greatest cultural influence. Like the other major building works of the French period, the Opera House exudes majesty and grandeur. In a city devastated by civil war and deprived of its former capital status, whose golden age had since passed, like the “old castle fallen into the shadow of dusk,” [2] the ‘Big Theater’ was a beacon of splendor in those colonial times, legitimating the prestige of the French overlord, but its beauty has remained even after the fall of the regime that built it. The Vietnamese people who first beheld it were exposed to the power of its stately new aesthetics, a counterpoint to the palaces and temples of an indigenous monarchy that had long since waned to the point of only nominal relevance. Of course, the aesthetic principles followed by the Opera House derive from Greco-Roman times, refined and elaborated over the centuries according to the golden ratio, but carrying with them also the ancients’ confidence in their right to conquer any other people they came across. The adornments and embellishments of the Opera House’s roof rise into the sky, its pediments supported by towering Ionic columns that extend from imposing stone feet, and its marble steps open out onto a wide plaza which seems to the suggest that one is approaching a cathedral. The endless reproductions of the Opera House’s image suggest that the structure has indeed conquered the aesthetic sensibility of the population, even if the vast majority of them have never stepped inside of it to hear a performance.
Trang Tien Street with the Opera House at the end in 1950s before the fall of French in Dien Bien Phu battle.
But architectural
preeminence is just one part of the issue. Buildings such as the Presidential
Palace or the halls of diplomatic reception rely upon a flashy sort of
splendor, representing a form of power that is still too far from the
psychology of the masses and thus from their aspirations as well. And yet, as a
cultural landmark, the Opera House still exerts an aesthetic appeal as a proper
place for “civilized” activities. Despite its terms having been imposed from
outside, the course of cultural progress has seen the Opera House grow on us
all the same, peacefully easing itself into the distinctive scenery of Hanoi
and the imagination of its public. In those early years after achieving
national independence, the first sessions of the National Assembly took place
within the Opera House, which went on to weather all the travails of a city at
war. After renovations in 1997 to host the Francophone Summit, the Opera House
became the city’s most expensive place to hold artistic performances, an
unwritten standard against which more modern venues were compared.
Nevertheless, the Opera
House is steeped in an outmoded neo-classicism, ignoring the creative
innovations of the present, a product of French urban planning, a structure
that presses upon the psychological scars of the people of Hanoi. That’s the
flipside of the pretty postcards, the ones with sepia photographs of colonial
Hanoi complete with old-fashioned buildings and the 36 streets of the Old
Quarter. It can be said that beyond the
Opera House, Hanoi is still searching for an iconic structure to call its own,
one that is both ennobling and familiar. It’s important to note, however, that
people are always lauding the structural perfection of the Opera House, its
balance of form and function. The operatic musical genre emerged in the 16th
century, when its patronage signified membership in Europe’s aristocratic
class. Internally, opera houses were designed to project natural acoustic
resonance, but their architectural style always reflected a classical polish
befitting the lifestyle, clothing, and social rhythms of the feudal gentry,
affectations later acquired and cultivated by the bourgeois class. The
performance venues, and culture in general, of Hanoi have not been privy to
such luck, since the “dynamic” impulses of modern architectural and social
trends seem always to contradict all that has come before. The Opera House will
alway be mired in its bygone values, like the beautiful close of a strange,
fading season in a country where few material structures can endure for long.
A concert was hold in Hanoi Opera House. As you can see, the auditorium is quite small. It was modeled on the Palais Garnier, the opera house of Paris.
Amid the fever of
urbanization, every street in the city is crowded with people, all pressing for
a bit of open space. The Opera House has become just such a space for many of
the city’s residents, an increasingly popular destination. It’s not just
operatic divas who perform at the Opera House; there are also comedy shows and
“golden oldies” concerts, such as a recent seven-night engagement by Tuấn Vũ.
The Opera House can deliver other sounds as well. There was once a time, during
the war, when a loudspeaker installed on the roof of the Opera House would
broadcast instructions during air raids. Inside of the Opera House hangs a
great lyre of Orpheus, plated in gold during the restorations of 1997.
Meanwhile, on the steps outside, one can find droves of young people who gather
there every night to chat and hang out beneath the shadow of the winged statues
on the roof (also the symbol of the Opera House), gazing out at the lovely
scene of the plaza below. This is something that, one hundred years ago, none
of us could have possibly imagined.
Nguyễn Trương Quý
(Source in Vietnamese: Phu Nu (Women) of HCMC newspapers, 2010).
Translated by Jacob O. Gold
Translated by Jacob O. Gold
1. Nguyễn Bính (1918-1966), a famous poet born in northern Việt Nam’s Nam Định province, a committed participant in the revolutionary movement but also well-known for his romantic works. In the poem mentioned by the author, a girl travels to Đặng village to hear the folk-opera singer she has fallen in love with. She wears her prettiest clothing, but is dismayed to find that the man is absent from the performance.
