The specific introduction of China quintessence Peking Opera.

Peking Opera: 1) Stage and Space-time Mode

In the past, there was no curtain on the stage of Peking Opera, and the audience could see the whole stage at a glance. Generally, there is only one table around the table and two chairs with chair covers on the stage, which is called "one table and two chairs". There is decorative embroidery on the table and chair cover. Sometimes there is nothing on the stage. Later, a curtain was added in front of the stage to cover the stage before the performance. Sometimes, during the performance, another curtain will be put on, which is called the "second curtain". It is used to keep the preparation work such as setting tables and chairs behind the scenes and changing clothes for actors. Actors can perform in front of the curtain at the same time, making the performance of Beijing Opera more compact.

The time and space of the Peking Opera stage is very free, not limited by the time and space of real life. After the curtain is opened, the stage does not represent any time or place before the actors take the stage. The time and space of Beijing Opera dance is determined by the actors' activities. For example, after a character in Beijing Opera enters the stage, he can show that the stage is his study by chanting and singing. However, after he left the stage, the study did not exist, and then another character appeared. Through his physical performance, we can see that the stage is a rugged mountain road. A person sits around his home and wants to go to a friend's house, so he walks around the stage (called "circus"), and his home is transformed into a friend's home. Another example is the shock of the people in the play when they hear an unexpected news. This should be an instant psychological reaction, but they can sing for a long time in order to portray the characters. On the contrary, the process of writing, reading and drinking would have taken some time, but for simplicity, just perform a gesture and play a suona qupai at the same time, and it will be completed.

Therefore, when enjoying Beijing opera, the audience needs to use their imagination with the chanting, singing and performance of the actors, so as to understand the time, place and environment in the play.

(2) Role type

The role types of Peking Opera are commonly known as "Shang", which are mainly divided according to the gender, age, identity, status, personality and temperament of the characters in the play. The business of Peking Opera evolved from Kunqu Opera, Han Hui Opera and other ancient operas. At first, it was divided into ten roles: life, Dan, end, foreign, clean, ugly, miscellaneous, introductory, starting and popular. Later, due to the development of performing arts and the richness of repertoire, it broke the strict business boundaries and integrated the four major businesses of life, Dan, Jie and Ugliness. Each line contains several different types of roles.

For example, there are: old students (mainly playing emperors and elegant and weak middle-aged and elderly people. Some military commanders, such as Hua Yun, Yue Fei and Huang Zhong. , belonging to "selling the old by relying on the old" and returning to the old school), Wu Sheng (warrior or chivalrous man), Xiao Sheng (mainly playing heroic figures, such as Zhou Yu, Lu Bu and handsome young people), Hong Sheng (such as Guan Yu)

There are Zheng Dan (or Tsing Yi) (dignified and demure woman), Hua Dan (innocent and lively girl or provocative young woman), wudan (female general, outlaw chivalrous woman and mythical wizard), etc. ), Lao Dan (an elderly woman) and Cai Dan (a clever and humorous woman or a stubborn and evil woman, etc. ).

The lines of Jing (also known as "Hualian") are Zheng Jing (a solemn and dignified loyal minister and good general), Vice Jing (a savage hero in the green forest or a traitor in the powerful minister) and Wu Jing (a brave warrior or a mythical fairy monster).

Ugly people (also known as "little face" and "three faces") have different professions, such as Wen Chou (a clever, funny or sinister figure) and Wu Chou (a clever and humorous hero), and each has its own characteristics in singing, reading, doing, fighting, clothing and makeup. Similarly, there are several schools. According to their own conditions and understanding of art, various schools innovate and create on the basis of tradition, forming distinctive styles and characteristics.

(3) Singing accompaniment

The vocals of Beijing Opera are mainly "Xipi" and "Huang Er", which is called "Pihuang" for short. Xipi and Huanger are two kinds of accents, which are divided into several "plates". These plates are all developed and changed on the basis of a tune. Xipi and Huanger have boards such as original board, adagio, fast three eyes, scattered board and rocking board, and Xipi also has boards such as Erliu, flowing water and Allegro.

The similar plates of Xipi and Huanger are both related and different. The difference lies in the strength and dispersion of the beat, the density of the rhythm, the speed and the simplicity of the melody. These plates can be divided separately or connected into sets. Different plates express different feelings. In singing, reading and playing, singing skills rank first. Singing is an important means of shaping characters. Besides Xipi and Huanger, there are four tones in Beijing Opera, such as Nanbangzi and Gaobangzi.

Beijing opera music is also stylized, and various accents and plates can be reused (of course, not completely copied). For example, Susan in Women Began to Solve sang Adagio Xipi, and Liu Yingchun in Fenhe Bay also sang Adagio Xipi. This is absolutely not allowed in opera. Therefore, to appreciate Beijing opera, we need to carefully distinguish the differences in singing.

In order to cooperate with the performance, describe the environment and render the atmosphere, some instrumental music is often played, which is called "Qupai". These tunes are long and short, played by suona and flute, and played by huqin, each with its own uses. For example, the marshal raised his tent to play "Water Dragon", greeted guests with "Gong Chi", and the mourning hall played "Crying Heaven".

Gong and drum play an important role in Beijing opera, and singing, reading and playing are inseparable from it. It is characterized by strong voice and distinct rhythm, which is used to strengthen the sense of rhythm and create an atmosphere. For example, without the accompaniment of gongs and drums, a battle is unimaginable. There are many concepts of gongs and drums in Beijing Opera, which are called "Gong and Drum Classics". It has a certain style of play, but it is very flexible. The Gong and Drum Classic is mainly divided into opening gongs and drums and body gongs and drums. The opening gongs and drums are the prelude gongs and drums, which lead to singing. Body gongs and drums are gongs and drums that cooperate with performances and martial arts.

Beijing opera gongs and drums also have a special function, which is to unify various means of expression. All the conversion between singing and playing, and the adjustment of stage rhythm are completed through gongs and drums. Therefore, gongs and drums run through the whole play.

The pronunciation of white characters in Beijing opera is also very distinctive. It is different from the language in daily life, but a stage language after artistic processing and musicalization.

The vocals of Beijing Opera are mainly divided into "Bai Jing" and "Bai Yun". Bai Jing is a preliminary treatment of Beijing dialect, and its rhythm and tone fluctuation are exaggerated. Hua Dan and the clowns in Beijing Opera all learn from Beijing and Bai. Bai Yun replaced Beijing dialect with "Zhongzhou rhyme", which sounds very different from Beijing dialect. It is a stage language after further processing, with more exaggerated rhythm and tone, more sense of rhythm and rhythm. Old Peking Opera students, Tsing Yi, Hualian, Xiao Sheng and Lao Dan all read rhymes. Nianbai can express the ideological content concisely and clearly, and has a unique expressive force.

Appreciating Beijing opera is different from appreciating opera. Audiences and actors can communicate directly. For example, an actor raises his hand, blocks another actor's line of sight with his sleeve, and tells the audience what he thinks. Assuming that the other party can't hear these words, it is called "bowing back". Watching Beijing opera is not as restricted as watching traditional Chinese opera, and the audience can respond to the evaluation of the actors at any time. For example, the actor's superb martial arts, beautiful drawling, and the wonderful "Flower Over the Door" played by the pianist all won warm applause and loud applause immediately. Encouraged by the audience, the actors performed harder, so that the stage echoed and the theater was full of warm atmosphere.

(4) Clothing and facial makeup

Traditional Chinese opera plays are mostly based on historical stories, reflecting the life of various dynasties. The characters are emperors and princes, talented people and beautiful women, and people of all colors. People of different dynasties and identities have different costumes and play different roles, which forces opera artists to formulate a set of rules on the dress.

The style of clothing is an important symbol of the role's social status. As far as helmets are concerned, they can be divided into four categories: crown, hat, helmet and towel. The emperor wears a crown, the civilian wears a gauze cap, the military commander wears a helmet, and the poor scholar wears a square towel. It is also a crown hat, and the wing styles are divided into three types: upward, straight and downward. The upward wing is called Tianyi, which is worn by emperors and senior courtiers. The gauze cap of ordinary civil servants is flat-winged; The downward wings are worn unofficially. Similarly, wearing a gauze hat, inserting golden flowers is the champion, and adding wings is Xu. Clothing is divided into python (including official clothes), oblique, hanging and pleated. The general rule is that emperors and civil servants wear embroidered robes, military commanders wear lying clothes, and civilians wear pleated clothes.

The color of the clothes is very particular. First, at the performance level, the emperor wears yellow, officials at the first to fourth levels wear scarlet, and officials below the fifth level wear blue-green; The second is to show custom, wear luxurious colors on festive occasions, red for prisoners in execution ground and white for mourning; The third is the performance of the scene. Lin chong wears black at night, highlighting a "night"; The fourth is to show his spiritual temperament. Guan Yu blushed and wore a green robe, which showed that he was brave and wise. Fifth, show the overall beauty of the stage, the marshal will be promoted, and a group of generals will wear red, green, white and black clothes.

The pattern on the dress is not only beautiful, but also symbolic. The clothes of the royal family and ministers often use dragon patterns, which is a symbol of feudal authority and dignity; Military commanders often use tiger and leopard patterns to symbolize courage; Wensheng's folds depict plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum, which are related to their personality and temperament. The counselor's costume symbolizes wisdom and Taoism with extreme pictures and gossip.

Different methods of clothing also reflect different scenes. A tunic skirt, tied to the outside of the clothes, shows the miserable situation of running around when walking with both hands supporting the skirt horn; Vincent's towel has two streamers hanging on the back, tied to the edge of the towel, and tied with a knot on the left side, which can also show haste; Before the marshal went out to war, he leaned on his back and wore a python, giving people a sense of bravery and pride.

The development of Facebook art is closely related to the development of China opera. In the performances of Yuan Zaju and Yuan Yuanyuan Zaju in 12 and 13 centuries, a clown face with a large white spot in the center of his face appeared.

In order to adapt to open-air performances, masks are generally available in three contrasting colors: black, red and white, emphasizing facial features, skin color and facial muscle contours, such as heavy eyebrows, big eyes, turned nose and big mouth. This primitive facial makeup is simple and rough, and it is gradually modified with the development of China traditional opera art. By the end of1the end of the 8th century1the beginning of the 9th century, Peking Opera has gradually formed a quite complete artistic style and performance method. On the basis of absorbing the advantages of facial makeup of various local operas, Peking Opera facial makeup has been fully developed through continuous exploration and research, processing improvement and innovative reform by several generations of famous actors and drama artists. Patterns and colors are becoming more and more colorful, and the distinction between different characters is becoming more and more clear, creating many faces in history and mythology and forming a complete makeup spectrum.

The function of Facebook is to express the character, quality, identity, specialty, appearance and so on through the colors and patterns of Facebook. Generally speaking, there are two ways to express such rich content: one is the combination of color changes, and the other is the composition of patterns.

From the color point of view, the present Peking Opera facial makeup has many colors, such as red, purple, black, white, blue, green, yellow, old red, tile gray, gold, silver, etc., which has developed from an exaggerated description of the natural skin color of characters to a suggestive color of character symbols. Generally speaking, red depicts the loyalty and courage of the characters; Purple symbolizes wisdom, courage and justice; Black embodies the noble character of loyalty, honest and frank and integrity; Water white implies the abomination of treacherous people and vicious means; Oil white shows a conceited and domineering character; Blue means being strong and brave; Green outlines chivalrous character; Yellow represents cruelty; Lao Hong shows more respect and brave veterans; Gray tiles suggest old age; Gold and silver are often used by gods, buddhas and ghosts to show their golden faces and bodies, symbolizing the illusory feeling.

The composition of Peking Opera facial makeup is varied, and with colorful decorative patterns, it is easy to make people dazzled and have a sense of mystery. In fact, there are only a dozen in summary. Because of mutual reference and mutual change, many spectral formulas are derived. These spectral forms are based on the appearance and personality characteristics of various characters. Even if it is the same type of spectrum, the line drawing and color processing of each part are different because of the different characters, so that each character is full of his own personality and never the same. The composition of Facebook is roughly as follows:

The whole face is basically painted with one color as the main body, and then the five senses are outlined with another color.

Three ceramic tile faces, eyebrows, eye sockets and nose sockets are marked with lines, showing three obvious main colors on the forehead and cheeks.

Cross-fronted, this painting method draws a color column from the bridge of the nose and connects it with the left and right eye sockets to form a cross in the middle of the face.

The painted face has a complete main color on the forehead and auxiliary color marks on other parts, with rich color types, diverse composition forms and complex and fine lines.

Pictographic face, this kind of facial makeup is mostly a fairy tale. It uses the forehead case to hook decorative patterns such as birds, animals, fish and insects to show what animals and humans it has been transformed into.

A crooked face generally represents a gangster with ulterior motives or a person with facial injuries, so the facial features are distorted.

There are many Beijing operas with myths and legends as their themes. Most of the characters in these plays are ghosts and gods, and Facebook belongs to "fairy face" or "pictographic face". One of the most famous characters is the Monkey King. He is a monkey jumping out of a stone. Later, he became a master, with high martial arts and miraculous powers. He protected the Tang Priest's Buddhist scriptures in the Western Heaven, demonized them along the way, and after suffering, he finally got back the true scriptures and made them into positive results, ranking among the immortals. His facial makeup belongs to "pictographic face", and the pattern shows the five senses of monkeys; But he later became a god, so he has the characteristics of "immortal face", that is, his eyes are painted with gold. The pearls on his forehead indicate that he is a Buddhist disciple.

In addition to the above categories of Facebook, there are "eunuch face", "hero face" and "little demon face".

There are some special cases about Peking Opera masks. Dandan doesn't wear makeup at ordinary times, but not necessarily. Zhong Lichun is an example. The legend of this woman is that during the Warring States Period, Qi (now Dongping, Shandong) had no salt, so it was also called Zhong Wuyan. She is used to fighting, rather masculine and ugly, so she adopts the method of drawing a portrait of Facebook in the play. After all, Wuyan is a heroine, so draw a lotus flower on her forehead to show her femininity.