Vietnamese-American artist Tammy Nguyen will present an aria from her upcoming opera, Timaeus and The Teacher: Foreword, at the Arsenale’s Tese dei Soppalchi in Venice on November 13 and 14, 2026. The performances are part of the closing program of the 61st Venice Biennale, which runs from November 13 to November 22 and features artist performances, lectures, discussions, and roundtables. Each 45-minute performance is scheduled from 4:30 pm to 5:15 pm.
Nguyen wrote and directed the aria, with music composed by Neely Bruce and choreography by Jamal Jackson. Grammy-nominated tenor Brian Vu will perform the leading role, accompanied by a group of dancers. The work was produced and commissioned by Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, where Nguyen is an associate professor. The full opera is still in development, with the artist aiming to complete and premiere it by fall 2029.
The opera tells the story of a young Vietnamese English teacher known as The Teacher, who tries to flee Saigon by boat in 1977 after teaching Chinese gold traders. The character is partly inspired by Nguyen’s father, who fled Vietnam as a refugee. During his journey across the South China Sea, his overcrowded boat encountered difficulties. A passing Sunoco oil tanker helped the refugees, with its captain, a German Holocaust survivor who understood their situation, providing assistance.
The story explores migration, national identity, and global maritime trade, where goods cross borders more freely than people.
The aria builds on Nguyen’s earlier exhibition at the Sarasota Art Museum, which explored flags of convenience, the practice of registering ships under foreign flags to benefit from different tax and regulatory requirements.
Tammy Nguyen incorporates national anthems associated with these countries into Bruce’s musical score, combining and rearranging them. The libretto uses a Fibonacci-based structure to disrupt conventional English sentence patterns and also references Plato’s Timaeus.
The stage design features a circular quilted tapestry inspired by Plato’s cosmological diagram. Dancers transform it into representations of the sea, a ship, and mountain ranges during the performance.
Nguyen’s paintings are also featured in the main Venice Biennale exhibition, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh and on view through November 22, 2026.
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