Nanxi (theatre)
Nanxi or xiwen was an early form of Chinese opera, developed from ancient traditions of mime, singing, and dancing during the Song dynasty in the 12th century. The name means literally "southern drama", and the form originated in the area around Wenzhou in southeastern China. Nanxi is an abbreviation of nanqu xiwen or nan xiwen. Nanxi is the earliest form of traditional Chinese Opera in the history of China.
Nanxi started as combinations of Song plays and local folk songs and ballads, using colloquial language with many scenes. Due to its coarse language, rough prosody, and unsophisticated literary style, Nanxi was considered a low art form during the Song and Yuan dynasties. However, its status was elevated with Tale of the Pipa written by Gao Ming, a play of better literary quality and more complex structure. It was highly regarded by the Ming Hongwu Emperor. By the middle of the Ming dynasty, Nanxi had developed into a more complex dramatic form known as chuanqi, of which is kunqu is a branch.
History
After the invention of Nanxi in Wenzhou in the 12th century, Nanxi soon after started to spread its influence all across China as the first-ever mature form of Chinese opera. Nanxi gradually transcended into its later form chuanqi, and remained its influence and became one of the major forms of drama in Ming Dynasty. At the time in Ming Dynasty, the original form of Nanxi sung in Wenzhounese lost its influence because of its universality and evolved into 4 different forms that were sung in four different tones. However, some scholars today argue that Nanxi in Ming Dynasty were sung in five different tones. The original Nanxi gave births to four different forms of itself in Ming Dynasty: Haiyan Tone, Yuyao Tone, Kunshan Tone, and Yiyang Tone. Among the four forms, the most popular one today is known as the Kun Opera that evolved from the Kunshan Tone of Nanxi in Ming Dynasty. Kun Opera is listed as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO since 2001.Performance
In Nanxi opera, as with western operetta, spoken passages alternated with verses set to popular music. Professional companies of actors performed nanxi in theatres that could hold thousands of spectators.Nanxi had seven role types, many of which were seen in later Chinese opera forms. Sheng were heroic male characters and dan heroines. The other role types Mo, jing, chou, wai, and hou were less defined roles, and actors in these role types portrayed a variety of characters in the same play. The role types of later forms of Chinese opera were more strictly defined, but can be seen to have their roots in nanxi.
Roles
On the stage setting of a Nanxi performance, there are generally seven role distribution elements, Life, Denier, Ugliness, Clarity, Finale, Exterior, Attachment, with the main drama plot developed around Life and Denial complemented usually by Ugliness, Clarity, and Finale. This stage setting system of Nanxi invented in Wenzhou with seven-element role distribution principle is the earliest complete on-stage role distribution principle system in the history of Chinese Opera.Works
Nanxi was considered a low art form and thus ignored in contemporary historiography, and it was almost forgotten by scholars after the mid-16th century. Of the large numbers of nanxi originally written, only 283 titles and 20 play texts survive. Complete scripts of three works were found in the 1920s, the earliest of which is a work from the Southern Song, The No. 1 Scholar Zhang Xie. The story tells of Zhang Xie, who on the way to the capital to take the imperial examination, is robbed and injured by bandits. He is nursed back to health by a local maiden, whom he marries. She then pays for him to continue to the capital to take the examination, in which he wins first place. However, when his wife tries to meet him in the capital, he rejects her for her lowly origins, and later tries to kill her and she is gravely injured falling off a cliff. She is saved by the Prime Minister who happens to pass by, and adopts her as his daughter. Later Zhang asks the Prime Minister to marry his daughter, and on the wedding night, finds that she is the wife he tried to kill.Most Nanxi works from before the end of Yuan dynasty were produced by anonymous authors. The first work with a known author is Tale of the Pipa by Gao Ming. The play tells the story of an abandoned wife who set off on a 12-year journey to find her husband, surviving by playing the pipa. The play became a model for Ming dynasty drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor.
Other notable Nanxi plays following the Tale of the Pipa include The Thorn Hairpin, The White Rabbit, The Moon Pavilion, and Killing Dog. Some of the missing plays such as Liu Wenlong and the Water Chestnut Mirror have been preserved in other languages.
''Tale of the Pipa''
Tale of the Pipa created by local Wenzhounese Gao Ming is a work of Nanxi that represents its highest quality and essence in its highest peak of influence in mid-Yuan Dynasty.It is called the connecting bridge of the time of Nanxi and the time of chuanqi. The creation of Tale of the Pipa is among the greatest achievements of Chinese Opera and has had an enormous impact on composition of traditional Chinese opera, and therefore, it is usually called as the "Ancestor of all Plays" in China along with Nan drama being called as the "Ancestor of all Operas" in China. In the 19th century, Tale of the Pipa was translated into English, French, German and Latin. Ever since it was published in modern era, the Lute Song has been significant in the history of Western appreciation of Chinese literature.
The first translation of Lute Song was published in 1841 in Paris by Imprimerie Royale, written by Antoine Bazin titled Le Pi-pa-ki ou l'Histoire de Luth, making the history of the first chuanqi play published in a Western language In 1946, American musical comedy based on Tale of the Pipa, titled Lute Song written by Will Irwin, Sidney Howard and starred Yul Brenner and Mary Martin, was produced on Broadway.