Peking Opera Performance: Sing, Speak, Act, and Fight
3 min readTo Chinese people, going to the theater to enjoy Peking Opera or other artistic performances is known as”seeing plays. What is a”play”in the Chinese context? In Peking Opera, “a play”is not so much the story or plot but a world of images created onstage, a wonderful arena of harmony between sentiments and settingsThe “play”or”world of images”created by Peking Opera naturally relies on the plot provided by thescript, and more importantly on the performance of the actors. However. to form a”world of images in Peking Opera. the plot of a story provides onl the framework and back ground. while the charm is produced by the actors performances.
Mei sanfang(1894-1961), the greatest Peking Opera artist. once remarked that the feature of the art of Peking Opera is”actors being at the center Peking Opera actors are the crux in creating a world of images onstage The performance of a Peking opera actor can besummarized into four basic aspects, of singing speaking, acting, and fighting, the core of which s a combination of song and choreograph Singing is of utmost importance in the performance of Peking Opera, because first of all, Peking Opera is a singing art. Any famous Peking Opera boasts several wonderful arias that are well known and popular with audiences.
The charm of the melodies usually embodies the sublime realm of the art of Peking Opera. Unable to appreciate the magic ofPeking Opera arias, one would fail to enjoy the profound beauty of the art itself Speaking refers to character monologues and dialogues, which serve to propel the development of the story. Speaking, like singing, needs to be executed in an appealing wayActing and fighting mean that actors employ physical movements to express the emotions of the characters and the circumstances. Acting includes body movements and eye movements, solo dancing or group dancing, etc. Most of the dancing is choreographed movements from everyday life.
Fighting is choreographed martial arts and acrobatics to depict fight or battle scenes. As the art of Peking Opera depends on movement to depict events, actors are given much room to perform on the stage. In the opera Picking up the Jade bracelet, the youn woman Sun yujiao and the young scholar fall in love with each other, their eyes affixed on each other as if a thread connected them Then, as Matchmaker Liu uses her pipe to pull the virtual”line up and down, the young couples eyes accordingly move up and down. These actions produce great humor and add much significance to the performance. Acting and fighting serve the whole play”or the “world of images, “but at the same time they are themsel ves a beautiful art in both form and skill. For example, in King Chu Bids Farewell to His Concubine, artist Mei Lanfang performed a sword dance in a miraculously killful way, which became very popular with audiences. This is a type of beautyin form. As for the beauty of skill, this usually includes some very difficult acrobatic movements, often referred to as “superb skills The uniqueness of performances in Peking Opera lies in the fact that the singing, speaking, acting, and fighting, all focus on one or two actors in the play These performers used to be called”Jueer, hence”mingjue”was used to refer to famous actors or actresses.
In this sense, the world of imagery created in Peking Opera mainly relies on the singing, speaking, acting, and fighting of actors especially in the performance of the famous plays. This is the biggest difference between Peking Opera and other forms of performing arts in terms of aesthetic appreciation. And the remark-“Peking Opera is the art of performers-well describes its quintessence The art of Peking Opera has a history of more than 200 years, and the practice and experience of countless Peking Opera artists prove that the aesthetic beauty of the art lies in none other than this fact.
