My Family // Cambodia, 1975

Vivian Fung, composer

Royce Vavrek, librettist

My Family // Cambodia, 1975 is inspired by events around Vivian Fung's family’s history. Fung’s extended family—including her grandmother, uncles, aunts, and cousins—lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the 1970s as part of the overseas Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. They were there quite happily until the Khmer Rouge stormed the capital in April 1975 and drove everyone out. Her family miraculously survived an arduous journey—over a month on foot in the countryside of Cambodia, and then in Vietnam. Ultimately, they ended up in Paris and Canada, but those events changed the course of her family forever. Fung was also born in 1975, and although born and raised in Canada, her childhood was deeply affected by omnipresent anxiety over her family’s situation and safety.

Only recently has Fung been able to piece together a more complete family history. She went to visit Cambodia for the first time in 2019 with her family, and she returned with Royce Vavrek in winter 2023 to continue research.

Using their Cambodia trips and ongoing oral histories with her family as inspirations for the libretto, they will finish writing this opera in 2024-2025. Their opera will be an immigrant story, using the events around Cambodia in 1975 as a backdrop of how one family survived a horrendous genocide and how these events have impacted their subsequent lives in a foreign country. The opera will be roughly 60-75 minutes in length and will be in one act.

Opera details

Duration: 60-75 minutes

Cast and Instrumentation:

  • 4 singers

  • Chamber ensemble: flexible instrumentation - e.g. 8-10 piece chamber ensemble, including percussion quartet, piano/keyboard, string quartet, clarinet, and electronics

Funding: We have secured funding for the workshop of the opera in 2025 but are seeking collaborators for commissioning and funders for recording the full version. We anticipate that there will be funding from several different sources and are reaching out to donors and presenters in Canada and the US.

COC Workshop Presentation May 30, 2025

My Family // Cambodia, 1975

Vivian Fung, composer
Royce Vavrek, librettist
V. — Midori Marsh, soprano
S. — Xin Wang, soprano
X. — Owen McCausland, tenor
Aunt — Erica Iris Huang, mezzo-soprano
Ari Cohen Mann, English horn
Andrew Busch, percussion
Chung Ling Lo, percussion
Michelle Colton, percussion
Timothy Cheung, piano

  • “Phone Call” is a inner monologue response after V received a phone call of news that her cousin has passed away.

  • “Grover and Friends” is an aria monologue remembering how she and her brother learned how to speak English through Sesame Street, and imagining this fantasia coming to live through the TV.

  • “Year Zero, Day One” gives an account of the first day and the realities of life under the Khmer Rouge.

  • “Aunt on Video” provides an account of the nuances of how Fung’s familiy fled over the course of 40 days and nights.

  • “Alarm” is a contemporary moment when S (Vivian’s female cousin) hears an alarm and has a flashback to the horrors of 1975.

  • “Visits” is inspired by a three-week trip Fung and Vavrek took to Cambodia in 2024. Along with Fung’s family, they visited spaces in Cambodia that housed her family while they were fleeing, how the spaces have changed, and how that impacts their current family. This final scene provides a voice to Fung, writing her and her own experience into the opera itself.

Workshopping of My Family // Cambodia, 1975 has received support from the Canadian Opera Company, Canada Council for the Arts, and Cambodia Living Arts. Special thanks to Vivian’s family for assistance in the research for this opera, especially her cousins Connie Lam and Sylaine Tchen.