Late artist Phung Ha in her most famous cai luong role – a male Chinese warlord.

People’s Artist Phung Ha, considered the last matriarch of cai luong (traditional southern folk opera), died on Saturday night of natural causes. She was 99.

After another veteran actress died in 2004 – People’s Artist Bay Nam – Ha was considered the last artist left from the first generation of cai luong performers in Vietnam.

Ha also served as an instructor in art schools both before and after the fall of the US-backed Saigon regime in 1975 and trained dozens of famous artists including Meritorious Artists Thanh Nga, Thanh Sang and Bach Tuyet, who is dubbed “the treasure of cai luong.”

Ha was also admired by thousands of fans and fellow artists for being a dedicated philanthropist. She co-established the Artists Rest Home in Ho Chi

Minh City’s District 8 to provide care for elderly and poor artists.

The Artists’ Pagoda and its Artists’ Cemetery in HCMC’s Go Vap District were also founded thanks to Ha’s efforts. Despite her advanced age, Ha never missed an opportunity to help underprivileged people around the region.

Bach Tuyet, one of the most talented students who studied under Ha, wrote on local newswire VietNamNet that Ha’s long life was the essence of cai luong and that she had shone both onstage and in real life because of her talent.

“To People’s Artist Phung Ha who have lived her life to the fullest, death is just like a journey home,” Tuyet said.

Phung Ha, whose real name is Truong Phung Hao, was born on April 30, 1911 in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang to a Chinese father and a Vietnamese mother.

Her family fell into poverty after her father’s death and Ha went to work in a brick factory at the age of 12. Ha was discovered by a cai luong troupe manager and made her singing debut at the age of 13.

She quickly won rave reviews from both critics and the public when she starred in a gender-bending role as Lu Bu, a Chinese warlord living in the second century AD who was dubbed the “Invincible Warrior.”

Ha’s valiant, fierce, yet nuanced depiction of a general became the highlight of her career and one of the most remembered roles on cai luong stages from the 1930s.

Phung Ha was named a “People’s Artist” in 1984.

Respect can be paid to Ha at the HCMC Funeral House at 25 Le Quy Don St., District 3. A funeral procession will leave the house at 10 a.m. on Wednesday July 8.

Ha will be laid to rest at HCMC’s Artists’ Cemetery.

Source: TN, Agencies