Beijing opera
5 min readAnd you know what is currently the most serious problem facing the Beijing Opera? The xiao sheng. These are actors who must sing and speak in a falsetto voice to play the part of a young man so do not be surprised to hear a voice that sounds feminine coming from a man ‘s mouth. these beardless actors with their agile movements, represent youth. It is a very difficult role and they can’t find people who can play it the fear is tha the xiao sheng may disappear and with it would disappear every opera in the genre.
At this point, I could no longer suppress my curiosity What characters are there in the beijing opera?
The female parts are called dan and they are subdivided into qingyi: kindand gentle; huadan: high-spirited or dissolute; wudan: skilled in martial arts; daomadan: an expert swordswoman and horse rider; and laodan: any older lad.
There are three male roles or sheng, which are: laosheng: an old man, xiaosheng: a young man with a falsetto voice, remember? and wusheng: a arrior.
The third group is known as Jing or “painted face”, and it represents frank, open people, but sometimes they can be rough, cunning and dangerous inally the chou or clown with his face painted white is responsible for amusing people with his jokes and the funny things he does When my daughter tells me what is required of her in the school of opera things like acrobatics, exhausting repetitions, controlled breathing or endless vocalizations it makes me appreciate good actors even more. In addition, you ought to know that.
The show that night was composed of excerpts from two different operas With the help of the pamphlets we got at the entrance and the annotated ranslation, we prepared to enjoy the first of them.
The Jade bracelet starts when a widow tells her daughter to look after herchickens because she has to go to the nearby temple to fulfil a vow. Apart from the two women there is nothing and nobody on stage The girl, after saying goodbye to her mother, gradually reveals through her graceful gestures and movements the place she is in and the work she does. Through her skilful movements, the audience gradually discovers.
the existence of the gate, the yard, the house, the street and the chickens Taking part in this game of artistic fiction, pretending that one believes in something one cannot really believe, especially when the actor is a true artist, is to deliberately allow oneself to fall under a spell. After donning an apron, which is also invisible, the young girl feeds the corn to her restless hens. They run around trying to get through the fence and the girl chases them and manages to keep them in. She counts them carefully and discovers that one is missing so in fright she runs into the street and starts looking high and low for it, visibly worried. Her gestures of relief show us that she finds the hen behind some object that we cannot identify and she returns with the recaptured hen and locks them all in with a convenient padlock thus putting an end to her worries Peking Opera Picking up a jade bracelet.
Soon after, she starts embroidering as she walks until suddenly something unexpected seems to happen the girl seems to be alerted by an invisible presence and she stops and begins to look out into the street. This time the handsome young man who appears on stage is made of flesh and blood. A sequence of looks, smiles, games and refined gestures, sober and graceful, show us that the two have fallen in love at first sight. In what appears to be a moment of carelessness, the boy drops a jade bracelet by the door of the house and leaves.
The young girl runs to pick it up and an old lady who has appeared on the scene sees it. Fortunately she is a matchmaker and the happy girl gives her a tiny embroidered shoe for the young stranger.
That was where the excerpt ended. Later i learned the long and complicated plot that follows though all i remember is that the young man in the story is already married a fact which he hides from the girl and the plot leads to humorous and tragic situations The intermission. In those few minutes i tried unsuccessfully to learn to eat watermelon and sunflower seeds. the art of cracking them open with one’s teeth proved more difficult than handling the chopsticks at lunchtime. i will have to keep trying.
The second extract is part of an opera entitled the drunken Concubine First among three thousand concubines while she retained her charms Yan Yuhuan had long been the favourite of the emperor minghuang ofthe tang Dynasty. Worried about the prolonged absence of her lover two weeks without seeing him was already too long-she had carefully prepared a tryst.
Her trusted eunuch wondered -why has my lady chosen the Pavilion of Deep fragrance in the garden, and not an intimate room in the palace for her rendezvous? The secret reason had to do with poetry, the emperor’ spassion. She hoped that the flowers on the terrace, which were in full splendour at the time, would awaken memories of the past they shared Memories of a poem by Li Bai, written in this very garden, whose verses they had savoured together; memories of the emperor’s words. enjoying the flowers with my favourite opposite me; memories worthy of being re-lived that night.
Dressed in her finest robes and escorted by a procession of maid servants, the concubine appeared on stage making the final decisions about the arrangements and nobody could have guessed her private concerns as she gazed out, with a dignified air, over the magnificent flowers on the terrace.
Crossing the arched Jade Bridge, she stared at the goldfish and the mandarin ducks, as if her heart was free from all cares. She approached the imperial table, calmly observing every detail and she sat down unable to avoid looking at the empty chair across from hers. Eunuchs and servants, looking down at the ground, waited in the positions determined by court etiquette. This was to be a long, long wait for the arrival of His Majest.
The day before, following a formal meeting, Yan Yuhuan had met the emperor in the palace and had whispered to him her invitation to tonight s banquet. The Emperor smiled silently and she had been very upset by the strange expression on his face fearing that something had been lost The bitter news duly came. The emperor would not be coming; his carriage had stopped in front of the Western Palace, the residence of a young beauty with the family name MeL. At this point our lady lost the lastvestiges of her dignity she ordered drinks to be served and dreamt of revenge. Since she had lost the most important thing in her life, what did it matter if she lost everything else?
