Opera in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, Huating, Xihua Town, Shimin Village, built Hongmeng Temple Theater, "Xifu" Qinqiang has been very prevalent. In the mid-Qing Dynasty, there has been Huating quzi theater. At the end of the Qing Dynasty built Huating City God Temple music building, red mountain town theater. Huating Quzi Opera is mainly performed through singing, reading, doing, playing four feats and a high degree of combination of mouth, eyes, body, hands, steps, in conjunction with its appropriate musical instruments. It is a form of folk art singing, which can be performed in streets, alleys, courtyards, houses and fields, and can also be sung in a sitting area on a bed.
Huating Quzi Opera performances are concentrated in the first month of the lunar calendar every year. It has a wide range of activities, from the county authorities, units to the streets and alleys, rural villages and communities to the family courtyard can be sung, the content of the local flavor of the Huating Nian singing, rice-planting ditties, lions and dry boats, folk dances, including blowing, playing and singing, say spring walks and other indispensable roles. Once the gongs and drums sound, singing, walking ugly, running, rowing dry boat, lion dance together with the opening performance, military and civil scenes are comparable to the opera. The first time I saw this was when I was in the middle of the night, and it was the last time I saw it.
The small song is the main content of the opera, the lion drums and gongs are for the show to open the scene and promote the atmosphere; walking ugly, fast board in the opera play a role in supporting and coordinating. Chunguan (plasterer) specializes in delivering funny and witty words of good luck to people at the beginning and end of the performance. When the social fire is to be transferred from A to B; well-crafted, beautifully decorated and realistically modeled dry boats appear at the performance site to attract the audience's attention so that the audience can continue to follow their procession to watch. At the same time for the performers to take a cool for the transfer to pack up the traveling clothes to play head protection. When the boat dance is finished, the next one has been prepared properly. This is what is often referred to as "out of the dry boat, the entrance to the lion, pad field of the rice-planting song, the back of the tune".
Huating quzi opera has three singing forms.
One is a large field, such as "Li Yangui sells water", "double official enjoin", "haunted tavern", "singing Mai Ren" and some other tunes, one tune after another tune to sing, the performance time is up to three or four hours. Accompanying instruments are banhu, sanxian, erhu, of which banhu is the main one; martial arts instruments are four-page tiles, bumper bells, and drums, cymbals and gongs to boost the atmosphere, fully embodying the four major functions of singing, chanting, doing and playing.
The second is the small field. Small field is based on a small song, ditty or Yangge dance, etc., the local people used to call "small song". If there is a section of clowns specializing in singing the pipe words: "speech is smooth, obscurity is not long, laughing in order to sing in the hearts of the people, the shaft is rotten twine tied, the egg is broken nailed to the horse spring, the fly stepped on the lid of the pot ringing, the calf jumped in the chicken rack ...... who said I put the little song upside down, arthritis harm in his mouth skin. " Another example is the part sung in the ditty "Little Cowherd": "I went to Ankou Kiln and bought a rotten casserole dish, and my son and his daughter, who are many, scrambled to scoop up the rice and broke the pot, and there are so many poor people in the world, and one of them seems to be like me. ...... ". This small song ditty lyrics witty, coupled with the singer lively and funny performance. Often attracted the audience laughed.
The third is to run the field. Running the field of singing is mostly by people without disguise mixed with a few clowns, first of all, around a circle face to face while walking horizontally, stepping, while singing, you can not with strings, sing a section of the back to a turn. One after the other around the circle, occasionally changing a few "winding cotton flowers", "pearl inverted curtain" and other formations, accompanied by drums and cymbals to help grow the atmosphere. Sometimes when the performer sings until he can't catch his breath, he intersperses a section of the fast-moving board to regulate the audience's taste, and at the same time, to let the performer change his breath. There is a single mouth and a pair of fast board, according to the performance of different places and different environments randomization.
Huating Quzi Opera, no matter whether it is sung or recited, contains the wisdom of the working people of Huating, which integrates the essence of the spoken folk language, is concise, clear, vivid and lively, vulgar and elegant.
In 2007, Huating Quzi Opera was awarded "National Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Project" by the State Council and the Ministry of Culture.