Rosa Cheng

Vancouver Cantonese Opera (VCO) is a unique Canadian arts organization deeply rooted in its local community while maintaining strong global ties to the opera scenes in China, Hong Kong, and North America. These connections date back to the mid-19th century when Chinese migrant workers brought Cantonese opera to Canada. For over a century, Cantonese opera has played a vital role in the cultural and spiritual life of the Chinese diaspora, defining the cultural heart of North American Chinatowns. It has connected people of all ages and backgrounds, including non-Chinese communities who were introduced to China’s traditional songs and stories through the opera.

Cantonese opera continues to mark major festivals of the Chinese lunar calendar worldwide, such as the Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Today, these festivities attract global audiences, as seen in Vancouver’s annual Lunar New Year parade, which draws over 100,000 participants. In 2009, UNESCO recognized Cantonese Opera as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Our mission is to preserve and promote Cantonese opera in Canada. We strive to present this tradition at the highest level of artistic excellence to both Chinese and non-Chinese audiences. Unlike other Chinese opera troupes in North America, we aim to reach diverse viewers, including families, seniors, and youth, through bilingual performances with live translations and English/Chinese subtitles. We perform in various venues, including libraries, community centers, parks, city squares, and festivals. Our offerings include regular performance and singing classes in English, and we host “behind the scenes” workshops and demos on the art of costuming. Our core values are artistic integrity and innovation, intercultural and intergenerational dialogue, accessibility, and community engagement. These values are essential for the survival of Cantonese Opera in Canada’s evolving society and for fostering a healthy and resilient creative community. Situated on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, we embrace compassion, friendship, inclusivity, diversity, and reconciliation, reflecting these values in our songs, stories, and community relationships.

Since our incorporation as a non-profit society in 2000, VCO has played a leading role in the development and dissemination of Cantonese Opera in British Columbia. We built a network of performers, musicians, and technicians to produce high-quality performances for Chinese Canadian opera fans, hosted visiting artists from Hong Kong, and offered professional singing classes and workshops. We partnered with martial arts associations to train performers for combat scenes. In response to the aging out of our core audiences and slower ticket sales since 2010, VCO has focused on reaching diverse and younger audiences through innovative programming, targeted outreach, and participation in high-profile festivals. We launched our first Multicultural Heritage Festival in 2012 and have participated annually in events such as the Richmond World Day Festival, Pull of the Net Multicultural Celebration, the Silk Road Festival, the Chinatown Spring Festival Parade, and the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival.

Our extensive outreach programs include popular “Behind The Scenes” workshops at public libraries and the Opera-in-Care program for adult care homes. We also offer summer “Opera Flash Mob Camps” for youth to learn our signature water-sleeves dancing techniques and host flash mob dances in public squares. Recently, we’ve collaborated with younger artists from other disciplines, such as our 2018 production of the "Tale of the Eastside Lantern" with indie rock band Son of James, exploring the history of Vancouver’s Chinatown.

In November 2022, VCO produced its first experimental Cantonese fusion opera, "The Prop Master’s Dream," which premiered at the Annex Theatre, selling out two shows and attracting a mainstream audience. This fusion opera involved musical composition, scriptwriting, community consultation, and project planning, bringing together diverse performers and musicians to share the life story of Wah-Kwan Gwan, a legendary prop master in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The opera explores themes of displacement, resilience, and intercultural memories, featuring a bilingual Chinese-English production with a score that weaves together mid-century Cantonese opera tunes, soundscapes of transpacific steamship lines, and diverse blues, folk, and vaudeville melodies.

In launching “The Prop Master’s Dream,” our goal is to infuse Cantonese Opera with contemporary and experimental approaches to musical composition, stage performance, and storytelling. By collaborating with diverse artists from other genres, we aim to tap into new avenues of creative expression and audience engagement. This production engages with the diasporic history of Cantonese Opera and its relationship with First Nations on unceded Coast Salish territories, sparking dialogue on Chinese-Indigenous relations, truth and reconciliation, and the healing of past injustices. We believe addressing these issues through opera can create a safe, inclusive space for reflection on intercultural histories in British Columbia. This bilingual production has the potential to engage diverse audiences and foster conversations on race, gender, identity, and politics. To ensure cultural sensitivity and inclusivity, we work closely with experienced elders and advisors from concept to implementation.