Chí Tâm (1950- ) is a popular Southern Vietnamese folk opera actor who had first risen to prominence in South Vietnam prior to the Fall of Saigon. He was formerly married to overseas Vietnamese singing sensation,
Hương Lan, from 1975 until 1982.
Dương Chí Tâm was born in 1950 in the provincial town of Vĩnh Long near the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to Chinese-Vietnamese parents. His father was a successful local businessman who owned and operated one of the largest grocery stores in the region named Vĩnh Hưng Supermarket. Chí Tâm was brought up in an upper middle class household located near the historical
Long Tấn Playhouse Theater in Vĩnh Long which showcased live performances of popular Southern Vietnamese folk opera plays to packed audiences nightly. From an early age, Chí Tâm's father had taken notice of his son's tremendous admiration along with natural talents for this particular style of singing and performing in Southern Vietnamese folk opera known as "cải lương". With the encouragement and financial backing from his loving father, Chí Tâm was able to take private lessons from the age of six taught by some of the most respected veteran "cải lương" musicians and performers such as
Bùi Kiên,
Mười Ngoạn and
Năm Thê. At 13, his father sent him to Saigon where he would study with legendary "cải lương" musician/playwright
Yên Sơn. After 2 years as Yên Sơn's pupil, Chí Tâm was recruited to join
Tinh Hoa Folk Opera Theater Troupe on a revue tour throughout Central Vietnam. During his association with Tinh Hoa Folk Opera Theater Troupe, Chí Tâm began to achieve notoriety with live audiences through his portrayals of significant roles in such productions as
Na Tra Lóc Thịt,
Công Chúa Thuỷ Tề and
Người Ăn Cắp Bánh Mì, an adaptation of
Les Misérables written by his teacher, Yên Sơn. During this time, Chí Tâm had also gained national prominence with his audio recordings for the
Continental record label of Southern Vietnamese folk opera compositions also written by Yên Sơn which include
Em Bé Đánh Giầy,
Về Bên Gối Mẹ,
Con Quạ Con Chồn and
Em Bé Bán Báo. A year into joining Tinh Hoa Folk Opera Theater Troupe, Chí Tâm requested time off to return to his hometown to be near his mother upon receiving news that she had fallen ill. As fate would have it, what was intended to be a brief hiatus from the "cải lương" stage until his mother's recovery unexpectedly turned into a lengthy absence which lasted for 5 years due to the the 16-year-old performer's voice changing during his return to Vĩnh Long drastically lowering his register beyond the minimal F key range required to sing Southern Vietnamese folk opera. This abrupt ending to Chí Tâm's fledgling career as a Southern Vietnamese folk opera performer left him devastated.
For the next 5 years, Chí Tâm struggled as he had to give up his dreams of the "cải lương" stage and searched other avenues to find an alternative profession. Initially, he remained in Vĩnh Long to help out with the family business and enrolled in classes to learn Cantonese. After a while, it became apparent to his family and even to himself that the business world was not his true calling. Chí Tâm then took his father's advice and relocated to Cần Thơ where he would undertake an apprenticeship at Á Châu Photography Studio in hopes of learning the craft of portraiture. Still fascinated with the "cải lương" stage, he took lessons with musician
Tứ Quốc while in Cần Thơ to learn how to play the stringed monochord zither instrument known as "đàn bầu", which is primarily used to accompany musical scores of Southern Vietnamese folk opera plays. After just several months, Chí Tâm was able to master the "đàn bầu" and joined the regional folk opera orchestra,
Tây Đô Cần Thơ, while maintaining his day job at the photography studio. He also participated as the narrator and accompanying musician on the radio folk opera program,
Thi Văn Tao Đàn, which aired weekly on the national military radio network for the ARVN.
Miraculously, in 1971 Chí Tâm's vocal range was fully restored to his original key prior to the voice change. He then resumed his career as a Southern Vietnamese folk opera performer and collaborated with the
Dạ Quang Châu Theater Troupe. This would be followed by a recruitment from the
Kim Chung 5 Theater Troupe at the legendary
Olympic Playhouse Theater in Saigon where he replaced actor
Minh Vương. Chí Tâm later joined the
Kim Chung 2 Theater Troupe and achieved great success in the "cải lương" plays alongside legendary actor
Minh Phụng,
Nhất Kiếm Bá Vương and
Nhạn Về Xóm Liễu, which also costarred
Lệ Thủy and
Kiều Tiên. Toward the end of 1971, Chí Tâm became the lead actor of the Kim Chung 2 Theater Troupe usually playing opposite lead actress
Mỹ Châu after actor
Phương Bình had left to start his own theater troupe. Right around this time, Chí Tâm was introduced to the record label,
Việt Nam, by playwright
Loan Thảo and was signed as a recording artist of "cải lương" audio productions. His biggest success in audio recordings was of the classic play,
Lan và Điệp, with actress
Thanh Kim Huệ. In 1974, Chí Tâm starred alongside
Hữu Phước and his daughter, Hương Lan, in the play,
Hán Đế Biệt Chiêu Quân. The positive reaction from audience members who had taken notice of the chemistry between them prompted Kim Chung 2 Theater Troupe to pair up Chí Tâm and Hương Lan again on March of 1975 for the play,
Nắng Thu Về Ngõ Trúc. By then, the two had become romantically involved off the stage. After a courtship lasting for less than a year, the couple were married on December of 1975. In 1977, Chí Tâm and Hương Lan welcomed the birth of their first son, Henri Bảo Nhi, in Ho Chi Minh City. On February of 1978, the couple along with their young son relocated to Paris, France and several months later welcomed the birth of their second child, another baby boy named Patrick Bảo Trang. They divorced in 1982. Three years later, Hương Lan resettled in Southern California taking along with her their two sons.
While living in Paris, Chí Tâm began working for the international telecommunications company, Alcatel Thompson, in 1979. In 1982, he along with late fellow Vietnamese folk opera performer,
Michel Mỹ, founded the
Năm Châu Theater Troupe, which performed for overseas Vietnamese audiences in various European countries such as France, Belgium, Switzerland, West Germany, Norway and Denmark. During the fall of 1989, Chí Tâm left his home and secured job of 10 years at Alcatel Thompson in Paris, France to resettle in Houston, Texas where he would remain for the next 7 years working as a columnist for
Vietnam Post and
Thương Mại Việt Nam Magazines. In 1996, Chí Tâm relocated to Orange County, California upon the invitation by
Làng Văn to work at the music production label's recording studio as their recording engineer. After a year working for Làng Văn, he opened his own recording studio. Chí Tâm has since done music arrangements for the overseas Vietnamese music label,
Hải Âu, and various other artists.
Since 1999, Chí Tâm has been the co-host of a radio program on
Little Saigon Radio together with radio personality,
Chu Ly. The radio program, which features a daily news segment, a talk show, interviews and various genres of Vietnamese music including pop, traditional, folk and folk opera, airs Monday through Friday from 1pm until 6pm (PST).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Chí Tâm recorded a series of "tân cổ giao duyên", a combination of Vietnamese pop and folk opera music genres, studio albums together with Hương Lan for the labels, Làng Văn and
Người Đẹp Bình Dương. In the 1990s, Chí Tâm appeared on several video productions for Làng Văn, most memorable being a music comedy sketch he had written and composed, entitled as
Đưa Nàng Về Dinh, performed with popular Anglo-American singer
Dalena. He has also graced the
Paris By Night stage, produced by
Thúy Nga. with a trilogy of "tân cổ giao duyên" duet performances together with Hương Lan and most recently, on volume 113 in a comedy sketch,
Đại Hội Táo Quân, alongside
Thúy Nga,
Duy Trường,
Hoài Tâm and the late
Kiều Linh. In 2011, Chí Tâm had appeared on volume 67 of the popular live show music video series produced by
Asia Entertainment in a duet performance of the song,
Ngày Xuân Vui Cưới, with singer
Sơn Ca.
Chí Tâm currently resides in Orange County, California with his long-time life partner, Minh Tuyền. The two had first met back in 1999 shortly after Chí Tâm had relocated from Houston, Texas.
It was his role in the first Vietnamese-American produced film, the Sundance Film Festival Award-winning Three Seasons, in 1999, directed by his nephew, Timothy Linh Bùi, and starring Harvey Keitel, that had formally introduced Đơn Dương to movie audiences in the United States. In 2001, he went to the United States to shoot two Hollywood pictures, Green Dragon (2001) starring Patrick Swayze, Forest Whitaker, Hiệp Thị Lê, Kathleen Lương and Kiều Chinh and We Were Soldiers (2002) starring Mel Gibson and Madeline Stowe. Upon his return to Vietnam in 2002, Đơn Dương was subjected to severe criticism by government officials for his participation in the two previous Hollywood films that had portrayed the Vietnamese communist military in a negative light. Đơn Dương was expelled from the Vietnamese Actor's Union, had his passport confiscated and was banned from working as an actor in Vietnam for the next several years. In 2006, he and his wife along with their two sons emigrated to the United States. Two years later, Đơn Dương divorced his first wife and married Mỹ Hạnh, a Vietnamese-American businesswoman, owner of Hạnh Phước Cosmetic Surgery Center in Houston, Texas and former Mrs. America Beauty Pageant Titleholder, who was 14 years his senior. Đơn Dương passed away on July 12, 2011 in San Francisco from a brain hemorrhage. 
