1 、Begins with the Leaver, Ends with the Peace
Chinese opera is a comprehensive stage art style. It is characterized by a multitude of art forms, aggregated together by a standard, reflecting their individuality in *** with the same nature. These forms mainly include: poetry, music and dance. Poetry refers to its literature, music to its musical accompaniment, and dance to its performance. Also included are such aspects as stage art, costumes, and make-up. And these artistic factors in the opera are all for one purpose, i.e., to play the story; all follow one principle, i.e., beauty.
2, the opera, so-called song and dance storytelling
Chinese opera is characterized, in a nutshell, "so-called song and dance storytelling" (the late Qing scholar Wang Guowei said). Opera and drama, both of which belong to the theater genre, involve actors playing characters and using dialogue and movement to express a storyline of a certain length. The difference is that opera uses musical dialogues and dance movements to express real life, i.e. the means of song and dance. It is also known as "singing, reading, acting and playing".
3, away from the form and take the meaning, get the idea and forget the form
Chinese opera expression of life, the use of a "take the idea and abandon the form" approach, such as Chinese painting of the landscape, with the vertical and horizontal strokes to reflect the life of all the beautiful things. Therefore, on the stage of opera, there is a red-faced Guan Yu, white-faced Cao Cao; there is a long song when crying, long-sleeved dance; there are no flowers and trees of spring color, no waves of the river.
4. Small stage, big stage
Chinese opera, as a kind of stage art, needs to face the contradiction between the smallness of the stage and the vastness of life. Opera does not use the principle of "the three equalities" to squeeze the life for performance as drama does. Instead, it uses virtual means to create flexible time and space, and accomplishes the portrayal of the vast world with the help of vivid performances of the actors and the imagination and understanding of the audience. Therefore, opera can create the illusion of darkness under the bright lights, and can harness horses on the empty stage.