An introduction to the knowledge of Peking Opera?

The earliest knowledge of Chinese culture that many foreigners have is often through Chinese restaurants all over the world, and they know that China is a country that is all about food culture. Probably the second thing that takes the second place is Peking Opera. The Peking Opera's face has almost become a representative symbol of Chinese culture, a kind of symbol. Many countries organize the "Year of Chinese Culture", and a large Peking Opera face is often painted on the posters. To understand Chinese culture, you can't help but understand Peking Opera.

Lu Zhishen (white monk face)

Peking Opera faces

Chinese Peking Opera stage, presenting the beauty of the thick colors, is a kind of wrong color skeleton of the gorgeous beauty. In addition to the costumes of the Peking Opera stage, the face plays a great role in creating this artistic atmosphere. Peking opera face is different from the mask, mask is covered in the human face, can be removed, while the face is made up in the actor's face.

The Peking Opera face is a colorful pattern of red, purple, white, yellow, black, blue, green, pink, gray, brown, gold, silver and other colors, extremely exaggerated and extremely colorful.

Face painting is mainly used in the face of the two roles of "Pure" and "Ugly". "Pure" is also known as "flower face", and "ugly" is "clown".

The face paintings have two meanings: one is to show the identity and character of the person in the play, such as "red face" means that the person is loyal and brave, "black face" means that the person is bold, and "white face" means that the person is wicked, and the face paintings are "tofu block". "tofu block" that this person is a small man, etc.; another intention is to reflect the moral and aesthetic evaluation of the role of people, such as honorable, hateful, noble, ridiculous, and so on.

In addition to the above two kinds of face in addition to the accident, it itself has a color beauty, pattern beauty. This color beauty, pattern beauty as a form of beauty, relative independence is also worth appreciating, such as Zhang Fei's "butterfly face" is to show that the character and the pattern of beauty is highly unified boutique. Today, many of our folk crafts (such as kites, masks, clay figures, carpets, tapestries, etc.), posters, advertisements, and modeling clothes take Peking Opera faces as the design element, which is focused on this formal beauty. At the same time, the beauty of color and pattern of the Peking Opera faces rendered the colorful and gorgeous beauty of the whole Peking Opera stage.

Singing, reciting, acting, playing

Chinese people refer to going to the theater to enjoy Peking Opera (as well as other operatic arts) as "watching a play". What is "theater"? The "drama" is not the story or plot written in the script, but a world of imagery, a world of scenario and beauty presented to the audience on the stage of Peking Opera.

The "drama" (the world of imagery) of Peking Opera, of course, also relies on the script, on the storyline provided by the script, but more importantly, it relies on the performance of the actors. In terms of the composition of the stage imagery ("play") of Peking Opera, the storyline provided by the script often constitutes only a framework, a kind of background, and the meaning and flavor is not mainly here, mainly in the performance of the actors. Therefore, Mei Lanfang said that the stage art of Peking Opera is characterized by "actor-centeredness". Peking Opera actors are the main body of Peking Opera stage imagery creation. As the saying goes, "the play" is in the actor.

The performance of Peking Opera actors, the most basic means is summarized in four words: singing, reciting, doing and playing. These four words are actually a combination of song and dance.

The "singing" in Peking Opera is of primary importance. Peking Opera is first and foremost a singing art. All famous plays in Peking Opera have a number of wonderful singing, and are widely circulated among the audience. Peking Opera singing flavor, often reflects the highest state of the art of Peking Opera. If you don't know how to appreciate the flavor of Peking Opera singing, you can't get a deep sense of beauty when watching Peking Opera.

"Nian" refers to recitation, which is the character's speech, and mainly plays the role of narrative in Peking Opera. There are two kinds of nianbai: yunbai and jingbai. Rhyming white is a very musical recitation, more elegant, people with status generally use rhyming white. Jingbai is a recitation language processed on the basis of Beijing dialect, with clean, sharp and quick features, generally used by people with low status. "Singing" should have a rhythm, and "reciting" should also have a rhythm.

"Doing" and "playing" are the physical movements that actors use to express characters and situations. Doing, including body, eyes, solo dance, group dance, etc., in which there is pure dance, but most of the daily life of the action of the dance. Fighting is the choreography of martial arts and acrobatics, which is used to express athletic or combat scenes. Because of the "virtual" character of Peking Opera, there is an extremely wide space for actors to "do" and "fight". In The Jade Bangle, a young girl, Sun Yujiao, and a young scholar, Fu Peng, look at each other and fall in love with each other, and their gazes seem to be connected into a tangible line. At this point, the play's Liu Matchmaker uses a smoking pot to hook this line, she pulls down hard, and the two men's eyes drop downward, and when she relaxes, the two men's eyes immediately rebound back. This kind of performance creates a lot of fun. The actor's "doing" and "playing", of course, serves the whole "play" (the world of imagery), but it often has a beauty of form and skill. Mei Lanfang's performance of Yu Ji's sword dance in Farewell My Concubine has a beauty of form and is welcomed by the audience. As for the beauty of technique, there are some difficult movements in Peking Opera that require special skills and are often called "masterpieces". The uniqueness of Peking Opera performances lies in the fact that singing, reciting, acting and playing are gathered in one or two main actors.