The History of Chinese Opera

The art of Chinese opera has a history of more than 800 years, spreading from the Southern Song Dynasty, Jin and Yuan dynasties, Ming and Qing dynasties, modern local operas to modern new operas.At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a group of progressive-minded opera artists reformed the content and performance forms of Beijing opera to meet the requirements of the first era. The fashionable new opera, which was once popular, was an attempt to reform Chinese opera. Under the double influence of the reform of the old opera and the Western drama, school drama activities appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. 1907 Chunliu Society organized by Chinese students in Tokyo, Chunyang Society established in Shanghai in the same year, and the "New Drama" staged by Nankai School Drama Troupe of Tianjin in 1909 are regarded as the symbols of the beginning of Chinese drama. The Chunyang Society's performance of "A Little Biography of Kayin" in 1908 is considered to be China's first established drama performance, and the new dramas after 1910 were called "civilized dramas", which were mostly performed in the form of curtain sheets, with only plot outlines, improvised by the actors. Around this time, this form of drama was also known as "Aimei Drama" and "Baihua Drama", etc. In 1928, the dramatist Hong Shen proposed to name it "Drama", which was intended to make it different from Chinese opera, opera, dance drama, and other forms of drama. In 1928, the dramatist Hong Shen proposed to name it "drama" to distinguish it from Chinese opera, opera, dance drama and mime.

Chinese drama, with a history of only about 80 to 90 years, was formed at the beginning of the 20th century by Hong Shen, who studied Western drama in the United States and devoted his life to promoting it in China, to distinguish it from Chinese opera, which relied on the means of singing, reciting, acting, and playing to focus on the programmatic representation of life. Drama reached maturity around the time of the May Fourth Movement. Since then, it has been divided into two periods, modern and contemporary, generally marked by the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Modern Chinese drama began with the extensive absorption of many genres of Western modern drama, and gradually formed its own tradition in the wave of social movements and revolutionary struggles.