In terms of genre, there are opera, melodrama, musical, rice-planting opera, opera, etc.; in terms of subject matter, it is mostly about the deeds of national heroes, folk stories, and the life and spirit of the war; in terms of form, it is either transformed into a traditional form of opera, or combined with drama and song, or adapted according to the lyrics of folk tunes, and there are always nearly one hundred of these works.
The first attempt at a new opera in China
In 1927, Yan Shushi (1905-1963) composed a stage opera, "Gao Shan Liu Shui," accompanied by folk music. Yan Shushi was a multi-talented artist who wrote his own libretto, composed his own music, directed and acted in the opera, as well as participated in the design and production of the lighting and scenery. The "High Mountains and Flowing Streams" is a beautiful recreation of the music of the Spring and Autumn Period and the highly civilized society in which many good musicians were born.
Yan Shushi went on to write and perform "Peach Blossoms in a Dream" and other operas such as "Tears of a Madman", "The Bells of a Lonely Island", and "Memories of the River". In 1931, after the September 18th Incident, a large number of patriots left the Northeast to enter the Guantanamo Bay. Yan Shushi, undaunted by the dangers, left the Northeast to enter the Guantanamo Bay after composing and performing the opera "Night of the Storm", which exposed the crimes of the Japanese invaders.
An important name in the history of modern Chinese music ____ Aaron Avashalomov
Aaron Avashalomov (1894-1965) was a Russian Jew who grew up in a Chinese town on the Chinese-Russian border, and was educated at the Conservatory of Zurich. On the basis of his extensive collection of Chinese folk music, he composed the opera "Guanyin" and the musical "Meng Jiangnu" based on legendary stories and traditional opera tones, which is one of the more successful practices in the development of Chinese opera. Aron Avshalomov has made important contributions to the creation of Chinese nationalized musical scores, music education, orchestral organization, the formation of musical societies, international exchanges of Chinese music, and the enhancement of popular music, and is an important name in the history of modern Chinese music.
Tcherepnin
Alexander Nikolaevich Tcherepnin (1899-1977) composed an opera, "The Mussel Shell" (later renamed "The Peasant and the Fairy"), based on a Chinese folk tale.
Tcherepnin was y attracted by the poignant love story between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, and thought it would be a good subject for an opera, and had the idea of turning "Dream of the Red Chamber" into an opera, but unfortunately, the man who had agreed to write the libretto, Lu Xun, died, and the opera was lost.
Successful Practices in the Process of Development and Exploration
After that, Zhang Shu composed a small-scale opera, "Wang Zhaojun," to the tune of kunqu; Chen Tianhe wrote the operas "Jing Ke" (unfinished) and "Peach Blossom Garden;" Wang Yiping rearranged the score of "Jing Ke" according to the original work of Chen Tianhe; Qian Renkang scored the music of Chen Tianhe's "Peach Blossom Garden," and also composed the music of "Three Beats of the Jiang Village," the small-scale opera by Cai Bingbai, based on which the opera "The Great Earth" was composed. On this basis, he composed the opera "Song of the Earth"; Huang Yuanluo wrote "Qiu Zi"; Lu Huabei wrote "The Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden"; Shamei wrote the classical opera "The Pavilion of Red Plums"; Zheng Zhisheng composed the opera "Zheng Chenggong", and there were also other works such as "Yue Fei," "Su Wu," and "The Story of the Western Chamber," which were more successful explorations and practices in the process of the development of Chinese operas.
The pioneer of Chinese opera creation in the twentieth century was Lai Kam Fai, who created 12 children's operas such as "Sparrow and Child" and "Little Painter," which had a great impact on China at that time and set a precedent for Chinese opera creation. 1934 Nie Er and Tian Han launched "The Tempest on the Yangtse River," which was a "drama plus singing This practice of "drama plus singing" later became a more common form of opera structure. From the mid-1930s, some professional composers in Shanghai and Chongqing explored different ways of creating national operas, and works such as Xi Shi (Chen Ge Xin, 1935), Peach Blossom Garden (Chen Tian He, 1939), Song of Shanghai (Zhang Hao, 1939), Song of the Earth (Qian Renkang, 1940), and Song of the Desert (Wang Luobin, 1942) appeared, which Most of them drew on the experience of Western grand opera compositions and sought to solve the problem of musical dramatization. Among these works, Huang Yuanluo's Qiu Zi was the most influential and highly accomplished. In Yan'an, the two works "Rural Song" (composed by Xiangshi) and "Marching Song of the People and the Army" (composed by Xinghai) also appeared, and in 1943, a new rice-planting song movement, which was easy to understand and popular among the masses, was launched in Yan'an. On the basis of the Yan'an rice-planting song movement, the rice-planting song opera "Brothers and Sisters Open the Wilderness" (composed by An Bo) and "Husband and Wife Know the Characters" (composed by Ma Ke), a novel and lively form of square song and dance opera, changed the direction of the development of the art of opera in China, and directly nurtured the large-scale opera "The White Hairy Woman".
In January-April 1945, the Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Art in Yan'an collectively created the opera "The White-haired Girl" based on the Hebei folk legend "The White-haired Immortal Nun" from the Jinchaji Border Region. The opera was written by He Jingzhi and Ding Yi, with music composed by Marco, Zhang Lu, Qu Wei, Huanzhi, Xiangcun, Chen Zi, and Liu Ki, and premiered in April 1945 in Yan'an after three months of hard work. The play was awarded the second prize of Stalin's Literary Prize in 1951. White-haired Girl" is a milestone work in the history of Chinese opera, which marks that Chinese opera has finally found its own unique development path and formed its own distinctive aesthetic character. After "White-haired Girl", there appeared "Liu Hulan" (composed by Luo Zongxian), "Red Leaf River" (composed by Liang Hanguang) and other excellent plays. Later, opera historians called the successive appearances of outstanding plays from "Brother and Sister in the Wilderness" to "The White-haired Girl", "Liu Hulan" and "Red Leaf River" within a short period of time "the first opera climax."
People's *** and seventeen years after the establishment of the country, China's opera creation in the creative thinking formed the following different ways:
(a), is the inheritance of the tradition of opera, the representative repertoire are:
"Xiao Erhei Marriage" which is by the Central Academy of Drama Opera Department of the same name based on the novel of Zhao Shuli collectively adapted the five-act opera, Tian Chuan, Yang Lanchun, penned, Ma Ke, Qiaogu, He Fei. Ma Ke, Qiao Gu, He Fei and Zhang Peiheng composed the music. The opera was written in 1952 and premiered by the Opera Department of the Central Academy of Drama in January 1953 at the Experimental Theater in Beijing, where it was also staged as part of the 1956 National Music Week. Hongxia was written by Shi Han, composed by Zhang Rui, and premiered by the Frontline Opera Troupe of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province in 1957.
Red Coral was written in the early 1960s. Composed by Wang Xiren and Hu Shiping. Zhao Zhong, Zhong Libing, Lin Yinyu and Shan Wen wrote the libretto. In the same year by the Chinese people's liberation army sea political opera troupe first performed in Beijing, was a success. There are also other operas such as "Dou'e Grievance" written by Chen Zi and others.
(2), is to folk song and dance drama, minor key drama or Li's children's song and dance drama as a reference system, the creation of new song and dance drama, which is represented by "Liu Sanjie".
(3) The drama with singing as its own structural model, represented by "Starlight, Starlight" (composed by Fu Gengchen and Hu Yi), which appeared after the Cultural Revolution;
(4) The traditional reference to Western grand opera, represented by "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang" (composed by Liang Hanguang), Song of the Grassland (composed by Luo Zongxian), Wang Fu Yun (composed by Zheng Lucheng), and Aiguli (composed by Shifu and Usmanjiang).
(5), is the "White-haired Girl" creative experience as a reference point, in the concept and approach to adhere to the content needs for all artistic ideas as a starting point, neither subject to, nor reject any of the techniques, as long as the content needs, you can also take the Western opera techniques, the plate cavity techniques or drama with singing techniques. This mode of creation has two masterpieces of opera -- "Red Guard of Honghu Lake" and "Sister Jiang" can prove its outstanding achievements.
The Honghu Red Guards was composed by Zhang Jing'an and Ouyang Qian'shu, with libretto by Zhu Benzhi, Zhang Jing'an, Ouyang Qian'shu, Yang Huishao and Mei Shaoshan, and premiered in Wuhan in 1959 by the Experimental Opera Troupe of Hubei Province.
Jiang Sister was adapted by the Air Government Opera Troupe of the Chinese People's Liberation Army from the novel Red Rock by Luo Guangbin and Yang Yiyan, with a libretto by Yan Su and music by Yang Ming, Jiang Chunyang and Jin Sha. The opera was composed in 1962-1964 and premiered in Beijing in 1964 by the Air Force Opera Troupe of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
In the new period, due to the changes in the living environment of the opera and the development of artistic concepts and operatic interests, there was a clear trend of polarization in the creation of the opera:
One is the trend of elegance, i.e., to continue to dig deeper and deeper along the direction of the serious grand opera, and to take the comprehensive aesthetic sense of the opera to achieve an integrated and balanced at a higher level of aesthetics as a major goal of artistic exploration. The early results of this exploration are The God of Flower Protection (by Huang Anlun), The Hurt Locker and The Wilderness.
The opera The Hurt Locker was adapted by Wang Quan and Han Wei from Lu Xun's novel of the same name, with music composed by Shi Guangnan, and premiered by the China Opera and Dance Theater in Beijing in the fall of 1981.
The opera "Heart of Fangcao" was composed by Wang Zuqai and Zhang Zhuoya, and adapted by the Frontier Song and Dance Troupe based on the commentary and drama "True Love and False Intentions", with the pen of Xiang Tong and He Zhaohua. it was first performed by the Frontier Song and Dance Troupe in Nanjing in 1983.
The Original Field was adapted by Wan Fang from the play of the same name by Mr. Cao Yu, with music composed by Jin Xiang, and premiered by the China Song and Dance Theater in July 1987 in Beijing. It was the first Chinese opera to be performed on a foreign stage. In January 1992, it was staged at the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The characters were played by Chinese singers from the U.S., and the conductor, director, orchestra, and chorus members were from the U.S., making the performance a success. There were also "Arirang" (by Cui Sanming and others) and "Return to the World" (by Xu Zhanhai).
After the 1990s, there was the adaptation of "Daughter of the Party," premiered in Beijing in 1991 by the Opera Troupe of the General Government of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, with lyrics by Yan Su and He Dongjiu, and music by Wang Zuying and Zhang Zhuoya. Marco Polo (by Wang Shiguang), An Chonggen (by Liu Zhenqiu), The King of Chu (by Jin Xiang), Sun Wu (by Cui Xin), Zhang Qian, Cang Yuan (by Xu Zhanhai and others), The Eagle (by Liu Xijin), and Amei Girl (by Shi Fu). In terms of its ideology, artistry and opera synthesis of the beauty of the high-level camp Mang theory, "The Wilderness", "Cangyuan", "Zhangqian" can be regarded as the peak of the new period of serious grand opera creation.
The other is the trend of secularization, that is, to take the American Broadway musicals as a frame of reference, to explore the way to develop our own popular musicals in China. The earliest achievements in this regard were "Our Modern Youth" (by Liu Zhenqiu), "The Years of the Wind" (by Shang Yi) and "The Legend of Friendship and Love" (by Tsui Hark) in the early 1980s, and since then this kind of exploration has been going on throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with no fewer than a hundred new plays performed, but with few successes.