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 others) 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 the fact 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 collective based on the novel of the same name of Zhao Shuli's adaptation of the five-act opera, Tian Chuan, Yang Lanchun, penned by. 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 Beijing Experimental Theater, and was the program 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 take the Western opera techniques, the plate cavity techniques or drama with singing techniques. This mode of creation has two masterpieces of opera - "Honghu Red Guards" and "Sister Jiang" can prove its outstanding achievements.
The Honghu Red Guard 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 Drama Theatre in Beijing in July 1987, and was the first play to be performed by the China Song and Dance Drama Theatre. 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 who had traveled to the U.S., and the conductor, director, orchestra, and chorus members were all from the U.S., and the performance was 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 comprehensive 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.