Tale of Lady Thi Kinh to make world premiere

Jacobs School of Music announced Sept. 18 the opera “The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh” will make its world premiere Feb. 7 in Bloomington.

This is the first time IU Opera Theater has played a host to a world premiere since “Vincent” in April 2011.

“The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh” is the second opera composed by Indiana University Jacobs School of Music faculty member P.Q. Phan.

Phan spent three years on the piece, which was inspired by a story he liked as a child in Vietnam.

“It took me a month to translate the tale, after which I began compiling different sources in the original Vietnamese,” Phan said in a press release. “I then used all of that background detail to create a version of the tale that is suitable for a traditional Western opera.”

The piece follows the journey of a young woman who becomes a Buddha. At first, she conceals her identity, but later becomes human when she decides to give another human a better life.

There are three main female roles in the opera, and the individual women represent perfection, nonconformism and female power.

“It’s a literary and cultural way of thinking about women as they’re represented in Vietnamese culture,” Phan said in a press release.

—­ Amanda Arnold