What the Horse Eats <\/em>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.<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n
![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/807\/2024\/06\/2015-9_Music_Faculty_Portraits_014_Brian_Arreola_WEB.jpg\")
\u201cThe composer and librettist, husband and wife team P.Q. Phan and Anvi Ho\u00e0ng, 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 \u2018Oriental other.\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n