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As a
renowned local opera mainly prevailing in Southwestern China's
Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, Sichuan Opera is characterized by unique solos,
refined acting, rich percussion and talented comedians, whose skills
are unparalleled in the world. The opera's application to be
enlisted as an Intangible World Heritage is currently underway.
Sichuan Opera features vivid,
humorous narration, singing and acrobatics. It also builds a system
of stylized movements and its acting is both exquisite and lively.
Sichuan Opera performances are always full of wit, humor, lively
dialogues and pronounced local flavors. To portray special
characters, the opera incorporates a series of stunts, including the
famous "face-changing." In Chinese opera, facial makeup is usually
painted, but in Sichuan opera, the performer can change his or her
facial makeup in the snap of a finger right on stage.
Most Sichuan Opera repertoires
are adapted from the Chinese classical novels, mythology, legends
and folk tales. Statistics show that total number of Sichuan Opera
plays exceeds 2,000.
Sichuan Opera is noted for its
high-pitched tunes, accompanied only by percussion instruments and
choruses, without wind or stringed instruments. In addition, this
spectacular theatrical presentation features bright sets and
costumes, plus a combination of music, dance and acrobatics. Among
China's 300 current local theater traditions, Sichuan Opera has
thrived and developed throughout ages as a distinct regional art
form.
Its special characteristic --
one that distinguishes Sichuan Opera from other theatrical
traditions -- is its immense vitality and dynamic performances that
always strive to bring out an individual's artistic abilities into
play to ensure fresh material, variety and creativity. In part due
to its intimate connection to a lively treasury of folk songs,
Sichuan Opera reveals an extraordinary flexibility and vitality of
expression in its music and movements.
As a renowned local opera mainly prevailing in Southwestern China's
Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, Sichuan Opera is characterized by
unique solos, refined acting, rich percussion and talented
comedians, whose skills are unparalleled in the world. The opera's
application to be enlisted as an Intangible World Heritage is
currently underway.
Sichuan Opera features vivid,
humorous narration, singing and acrobatics. It also builds a system
of stylized movements and its acting is both exquisite and lively.
Sichuan Opera performances are always full of wit, humor, lively
dialogues and pronounced local flavors. To portray special
characters, the opera incorporates a series of stunts, including the
famous "face-changing." In Chinese opera, facial makeup is usually
painted, but in Sichuan opera, the performer can change his or her
facial makeup in the snap of a finger right on stage.
Most Sichuan Opera repertoires are
adapted from the Chinese classical novels, mythology, legends and
folk tales. Statistics show that total number of Sichuan Opera plays
exceeds 2,000.
Sichuan Opera is noted for its high-pitched tunes, accompanied only
by percussion instruments and choruses, without wind or stringed
instruments. In addition, this spectacular theatrical presentation
features bright sets and costumes, plus a combination of music,
dance and acrobatics. Among China's 300 current local theater
traditions, Sichuan Opera has thrived and developed throughout ages
as a distinct regional art form.
Its special characteristic -- one that
distinguishes Sichuan Opera from other theatrical traditions -- is
its immense vitality and dynamic performances that always strive to
bring out an individual's artistic abilities into play to ensure
fresh material, variety and creativity. In part due to its intimate
connection to a lively treasury of folk songs, Sichuan Opera reveals
an extraordinary flexibility and vitality of expression in its music
and movements.
The development of Sichuan Opera is
intrinsically linked to the natural conditions in Sichuan. The
principal agricultural products cultivated in Sichuan's
extraordinarily fertile soil include rice, tea and mulberry trees,
whose leaves are used in the traditional industry of raising
silkworms. Rustic songs originally sung by boatmen, tea-plantation
and rice-paddy workers developed into famous local folk songs,
which, in a sense, can be regarded as the precursors of the
province's great operatic tradition.
Changing Faces
One of the most fascinating, artistic
charms of Sichuan Opera is "face-changing", which is achieved by
quickly tearing off, rubbing, or blowing away a mask to reveal
another.
The performer prepares many special masks
in advance made of gauze and elastic materials, such as sheep embryo
membranes and rubber. After the masks are painted with different
designs and assembled with a special transparent thread, they are
pasted onto the performer's face.
The special masks for "changing faces" must
be made to fit the performer's face to ensure that they are pasted
as close as possible to the skin. Previously, the masks were
discarded after a performance, but today they can be recycled with
some minor repairs.
The music of Sichuan Opera
Musically, Sichuan Opera combines five
different sonic systems, namely, gao qiang hu qin, deng diao, tan xi
and kun qu -- all of which were still represented by their own
independent troupes respectively until the end of the Qing Dynasty
(1644-1911).
Founded in the province's capital city of
Chengdu in 1912, the Sanqinghui troupe officially combined all five
of these systems and fused them into a unique system of acting,
singing and instrumental music, where all of the librettos were
written in the Sichuan dialect. The best-known style with most
distinct characteristics of southwestern China is called gao qiang,
which is distinguished by solos that are usually accompanied by
sparse rhythmical accentuations played with wooden clappers.
This highly ornamental vocal style is
distinguished by brilliantly artful glissando links, skillfully
implemented vibrato embellishments around a single tone in the form
of a delicately elegant yet energetically melodic ornamentation. The
simplicity of the folk songs' melodic structures is often retained.
In addition, an orchestra chorus either
comments on or repeats what has already been sung. The chorus can
also be represented by a solo. In the past, members of the chorus
also often doubled as percussionists and, like the percussionists,
were clad in everyday garments and appeared in full view on stage.
Nowadays, they perform in the orchestral area, which is situated
along one side of the stage and is concealed from the audience.
The barbarian fiddle, or hu qin, was
probably brought to Sichuan by the famous Peking Opera, where
shrill-stringed are instruments are predominant. On the other hand,
the masked theater known as deng diao, which evolved from exorcist
ceremonies practiced in the villages, is clearly of Sichuan origin.
Deng diao was only accepted very gradually and with much hesitation
from professional performance troupes. Removable masks are distinct
from the painted masks, which are traditionally worn by performers
on stages elsewhere in China. Alongside the dominant dialogues there
are also numerous old folkloric themes that were typically heard in
the past at rural festivals, weddings and funeral processions. The
accompanying instruments are primarily small drums and gongs.
Itinerant troupes from northern China probably brought the clapper
element, tan xi, to Sichuan. This style is characterized by cunning,
emotionally fraught rhythms played on wooden clappers, accompanied
by the so-called "moon guitar."
The fifth stylistic element in Sichuan
Opera is called kun qu. It originated in the southern Yangtze Basin
and was later imported to Sichuan as a variant of the traditional
and respected Kun Opera, with its discriminating literary dramas and
fluent, highly artful melodies. The dominant melodic instrument here
is the bamboo flute (di zi). A single theater piece of Sichuan Opera
usually combines two or three of these musical styles. Only very
rarely do all five systems appear together. The gao qiang style is
the most frequent and its structure is most clearly developed.
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