Peking opera
Peking opera, or Beijing opera, is the dominant form of Chinese opera, which combines instrumental music, vocal performance, mime, martial arts, dance and acrobatics. It arose in Beijing in the mid-Qing dynasty and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing court and has come to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China. Major performance troupes are based in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. The art form is also preserved in Taiwan, where it is also known as Guójù. It has also spread to other regions such as the United States and Japan.
Peking opera features four main role types, sheng, dan, jing, and chou. Performing troupes often have several of each variety, as well as numerous secondary and tertiary performers. With their elaborate and colorful costumes, performers are the only focal points on Peking opera characteristically sparse stage. They use the skills of speech, song, dance and combat in movements that are symbolic and suggestive, rather than realistic. Above all else, the skill of performers is evaluated according to the beauty of their movements. Performers also adhere to a variety of stylistic conventions that help audiences navigate the plot of the production. The layers of meaning within each movement must be expressed in time with music. The music of Peking opera can be divided into the xīpí and èrhuáng styles. Melodies include arias, fixed-tune melodies and percussion patterns. The repertoire of Peking opera includes over 1,400 works, which are based on Chinese history, folklore and, increasingly, contemporary life.
Traditional Peking opera was denounced as "feudalistic" and "bourgeois" during the Cultural Revolution and replaced mostly with the revolutionary operas until the period's end. After the Cultural Revolution, these transformations were largely undone. In recent years, Peking opera has responded to sagging audience numbers by attempting reforms, including improving performance quality, adapting new performance elements, shortening works, and performing new and original plays.
Etymology
"Peking opera" is the English term for the art form; the term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1953. "Beijing opera" is a more recent equivalent.In China, the art form has been known by many names at different times and places. The earliest Chinese name,, was a combination of the and melodies. As it increased in popularity, its name became or, which reflected its start in the capital city. From 1927 to 1949, when Beijing was known as Beiping, Peking opera was known as or to reflect this change. Finally, with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the name of the capital city was reverted to Beijing, and the formal name of this theatre in mainland China was established as. The Taiwanese name for this type of opera,, or "national opera", reflects disputes over the true seat of the Chinese government.
History
Origins
Peking opera was born when the Four Great Anhui Troupes brought Hui opera, or what is now called Huiju, in 1790 to Beijing, for the eightieth birthday of the Qianlong Emperor on 25 September. It was originally staged for the court and only made available to the public later. In 1828, several famous Hubei troupes arrived in Beijing and performed jointly with Anhui troupes. The combination gradually formed Peking opera's melodies. Peking opera is generally regarded as having fully formed by 1845. Although it is called Peking opera, its origins are in the greater areas of the capital of Anhui province, including southern Anhui and eastern Hubei, which share the similar dialect of Xiajiang Mandarin. Peking opera's two main melodies, and. literally means "skin puppet show", referring to the puppet show that originated in Shaanxi province. Chinese puppet shows always involve singing. Much dialogue is also carried out in an archaic form of Mandarin Chinese, in which the Zhongyuan Mandarin dialects of Henan and Shaanxi are closest. This form of Mandarin is recorded in the book. It also absorbed music from other operas and local Zhili musical art forms. Some scholars believe that the musical form was derived from the historic Qinqiang, while many conventions of staging, performance elements, and aesthetic principles were retained from Kunqu, the form that preceded it as court art.Thus, Peking opera is not a monolithic form, but rather a coalescence of many older forms. However, the new form also creates its own innovations. The vocal requirements for all of the major roles were greatly reduced for Peking opera. The Chou, in particular, rarely has a singing part in Peking opera, unlike the equivalent role in style. The melodies that accompany each play were also simplified, and are played with different traditional instruments than in earlier forms. Perhaps most noticeably, true acrobatic elements were introduced with Peking opera. The form grew in popularity throughout the 19th century. The Anhui troupes reached their peak of excellence in the middle of the century and were invited to perform in the court of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that had been established during the Taiping Rebellion. Beginning in 1884, the Empress Dowager Cixi became a regular patron of Peking opera, cementing its status over earlier forms like. The popularity of Peking opera has been attributed to the simplicity of the form, with only a few voices and singing patterns. This allowed anyone to sing the arias themselves.
At the time of its growth in the late nineteenth century, albums became used to display aspects of stage culture, including makeup and costumes of performers.
Peking opera was initially an exclusively male pursuit. There were bans on female performers and major limitations on female audience members, so the art form mainly catered to the tastes of male audience members. Qing dynasty emperors repeatedly banned female performers beginning with Kangxi Emperor in 1671. The last ban was by the Qianlong Emperor who banned all female performers in Beijing in 1772. The appearance of women on the stage began unofficially during the 1870s. Female performers began to impersonate male roles and declared equality with men. They were given a venue for their talents when Li Maoer, himself a former Peking-opera performer, founded the first female Peking-opera troupe in Shanghai. By 1894, the first commercial venue showcasing female performance troupes appeared in Shanghai. This encouraged other female troupes to form, which gradually increased in popularity. As a result, theatre artist Yu Zhenting petitioned for the lifting of the ban after the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. This was accepted, and the ban was lifted in 1912, although male Dan continued to be popular after this period.
Model "revolutionary opera" and Peking opera in Taiwan
After the Chinese Civil War, Peking opera became a focal point of identity for both involved parties. When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in mainland China in 1949, the newly formed government moved to bring art into line with Communist ideology, and "to make art and literature a component of the whole revolutionary machine". To this end, dramatic works without Communist themes were considered subversive, and were ultimately banned during the Cultural Revolution.The use of opera as a tool to transmit communist ideology reached its climax in the Cultural Revolution, under the purview of Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong. The "model operas" were considered one of the great achievements of the Cultural Revolution, and were meant to express Mao's view that "art must serve the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers and must conform to proletarian ideology."
Among the eight model plays eventually retained during that time were five Peking operas. Notable among these operas was The Legend of the Red Lantern, which was approved as a concert with piano accompaniment based on a suggestion from Jiang Qing. Performances of works beyond the eight model plays were allowed only in heavily modified form. The endings of many traditional plays were changed, and visible stage assistants in Peking opera were eliminated. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, traditional Peking opera began to be performed again. Peking opera and other theatrical art forms were a controversial subject both before and during the Twelfth National People's Congress in 1982. A study carried in the People's Daily revealed that over 80 percent of musical dramas staged in the country were traditional plays from the pre-Communist era, as opposed to newly written historical dramas promoting socialist values. In response, Communist party officials enacted reforms to curb liberalism and foreign influence in theatrical works.
After the retreat of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949, Peking opera there took on a special status of "political symbolism", in which the Kuomintang government encouraged the art form over other forms of performance in an attempt to claim a position as the sole representative of Chinese culture. This often occurred at the expense of traditional Taiwanese opera. Due to its status as a prestigious art form with a long history, Peking opera has indeed been studied more and received more monetary support than other forms of theater in Taiwan. However, there has also been a competing movement towards advocating native opera to differentiate Taiwan from the mainland. In September 1990, when the Kuomintang government participated in a state-sponsored mainland cultural event for the first time, a Taiwanese opera group was sent, possibly to emphasize "Taiwaneseness".
Modern Peking opera
During the second half of the 20th century, Peking opera witnessed a steady decline in audience numbers. This has been attributed both to a decrease in performance quality and an inability of the traditional opera form to capture modern life. Furthermore, the archaic language of Peking opera required productions to use electronic subtitles, which hampered the development of the form. The influence of Western culture has also left the younger generations impatient with the slow pacing of Peking opera. In response, Peking opera began to see reform starting in the 1980s. Such reforms have taken the form of creating a school of performance theory to increase performance quality, employing modern elements to attract new audiences, and performing new plays outside of the traditional canon. However, these reforms have been hampered by both a lack of funding and an adverse political climate that makes the performance of new plays difficult.In addition to more formal reform measures, Peking-opera troupes during the 1980s also adopted more unofficial changes. Some of those seen in traditional works have been called "technique for technique's sake". This has included the use of extended high pitch sequences by female Dan, and the addition of lengthier movement sections and percussion sequences to traditional works. Such changes have generally met with disdain from Peking-opera performers, who see them as ploys to gain immediate audience appeal. Plays with repetitive sequences have also been shortened to hold audience interest. New works have naturally experienced a greater freedom to experiment. Regional, popular, and foreign techniques have been adopted, including Western-style makeup and beards and new face paint designs for Jing characters. The spirit of reform continued during the 1990s. To survive in an increasingly open market, troupes like the Shanghai Peking Opera Company needed to bring traditional Peking opera to new audiences. To do this, they have offered an increasing number of free performances in public areas.
There has also been a general feeling of a shift in the creative attribution of Peking-opera works. The performer has traditionally played a large role in the scripting and staging of Peking-opera works. However, perhaps following the lead of the West, Peking opera in recent decades has shifted to a more director and playwright-centered model. Performers have striven to introduce innovation in their work while heeding the call for reform from this new upper level of Peking-opera producers.
Channel CCTV-11 in mainland China is currently dedicated to broadcasting classic Chinese opera productions, including Peking opera.