Soprano Hiền Nguyễn impresses Italian concert goers with Vietnamese folk tune

HÀ NỘI – Vietnamese soprano Hiền Nguyễn will wrap up her concert tour La Passione in Italy with a performance in Sorrento, one of Italy’s most famous resort towns, on Friday.

The Hà Nội-based singer earlier performed in Perugia, a city about 164km north of Rome.

Vietnamese soprano Hiền Nguyễn impresses Italian audiences with a Vietnamese quan họ (love duet singing) folk tune during her concert in Perugia, Italy. Photos courtesy of the singer

Here, on an open-air stage at the panoramic Piazza IV Novembre – a square in the city’s historic centre – Hiền Nguyễn impressed Italian audience with a repertoire featuring timeless classic and semi-classic tunes of both Italy and Việt Nam.

The quan họ (love duet singing) – a Vietnamese traditional music genre that has been recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – was been presented in chamber music style to an audience of several hundred people. 

Wearing the graceful traditional Vietnamese áo dài, Hiền Nguyễn performed one of most popular quan họ folk tunes, Se Chỉ Luồn Kim (Threading the Needle).

The repertoire also included the the ballad melody of Ru Con Mùa Đông (Winter Lullaby) by Vietnamese composer Đặng Hữu Phúc.

Hiền Nguyễn and Italian music professor Gianni Kriscak, who has been by her side to accompany her on piano during the concert La Passione in both Việt Nam and Italy.

Other famous classic and semi-classic Italian songs such as Tristezza (Sadness) by Paolo Tosti, Quando m’envo (Musetta’s Waltz) by Puccini, Torna a Surriento (Come Back to Sorrento) by Ernesto De Curtis, La Passione by Jorge Avendano Luhrs, Caruso by Lucio Dalla, and Besame mucho by Consuelo Velazquez were presented during the one-and-a-half-hour long concert.

Hiền Nguyễn’s respected teacher, Italian professor Gianni Kriscak, who is currently a lecturer of theatrical music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, was by her side to accompany her on piano during the concert. Kriscak has been performing together with Hiền Nguyễn during the concert La Passione in both Việt Nam and Italy.

Debuted in Hà Nội in March, then in HCM City in June, the concert La Passione celebrated the launch of a book co-penned by Hiền Nguyễn, Prof. Kriscak and vocal lecturer Trịnh Thị Oanh.

Entitled History of Italian Opera, the book is the first ever Vietnamese-language publication about the origin of Italian opera. It offers music lovers a new source of information about this theatrical art.

Italy has played an important role in Hiền Nguyễn’s career. While studying at the Việt Nam National Academy of Music (VNAM) and the University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, in 2012, she won a scholarship to study Italian language and culture at the University for Foreigners in Perugia.

Hiền Nguyễn poses with two Italians from the audience who also enjoy her album Yêu and Mơ (Love & Dream).

A year later, she was the only graduate of VNAM to win a scholarship from the Milan Conservatory where she studied for two years. Coming back from Italy, Hiền realised that classical music is still challenging for most Vietnamese people.

Before concert La Passione, Hiền Nguyễn had others such as Belle Duette in 2015, Mộc Miên in 2018, Yêu (Love) in 2021. In 2021, she released her debut album Yêu and Mơ (Love & Dream) that includes eight songs sang in four languages Vietnamese, Italian, Spanish and English.

Currently, she has been pursuing a doctoral degree at the National University of Art Education in Hà Nội. VNS