An overview of Chinese opera in the early twentieth century?

The twentieth century is a century in which the study of Chinese opera has achieved fruitful results.

The reasons are, firstly, with the change of the times, opera, a "little skill" that was originally regarded as "games and actors", has entered the academic hall with great strides; secondly, with the improvement of understanding level, research on

Researchers' theoretical concepts are constantly being updated and research methods are constantly making breakthroughs; third, with the development of related disciplines (such as folklore and archaeology), data are becoming increasingly abundant, and researchers' horizons are becoming increasingly broadened.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, there are many valuable historical experiences in the field of Chinese opera research that deserve to be carefully summarized.

Here, first, we will briefly review the research on Chinese opera in the early twentieth century.

The study of Chinese opera in the early twentieth century mentioned here is taken as the upper limit of Liang Qichao's famous paper "On the Relationship between Novels (Containing Opera) and Mass Governance" published in the first issue of "New Novel" in 1902, and Wu Mei's "

"Nanbei Ci Simplified Musical Scores" was completed as the lower limit, which took about thirty years.

During this period, the research on opera history, opera aesthetics, and opera phonology all made remarkable progress.

Due to space limitations, here we will only talk about opera history and opera aesthetics.

1. The scale of opera history. Although there are many discussions on the history of Chinese opera by opera artists before the 20th century, most of them are sporadic and unsystematic, and it is difficult to call them opera history in the strict sense.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the first scientific and complete monograph on the history of opera was finally produced, which was the "History of Opera of the Song and Yuan Dynasties" completed by Wang Guowei in 1912.

Wang Guowei's governance of the history of Song and Yuan operas has the following characteristics: first, a clear historical view of the development of literature and art.

"Preface to the History of Operas of the Song and Yuan Dynasties" states: "Every generation has its own literature: Chu's Sao, Han's Fu, Six Dynasties' parallelism, Tang's poetry, Song's lyrics, and Yuan's music are all so-called literature of one generation.

No one can be succeeded by future generations." Wang Guowei's point of view is based on and developed from the point of view of "one generation has its own success" put forward by Jiao Xun in "Book of Changes", and is very useful for studying the history of Song and Yuan operas.

special guiding significance.

Because Yuan Zaju was not taken seriously in the past, "the historical records of the two dynasties and the collection of Siku were not recorded; later generations of Confucian scholars despised Taoism." "As a result, the literature of a generation was obscure and obscure.

Hundreds of years".

From the perspective of the history of literary and artistic development, we can give a fair evaluation to Yuan dramas.

Second, a clear concept of "real opera".

In Wang Guowei's work, "drama" is a relatively broad concept, including singing and dancing, burlesque, and "real drama."

The standard of "true drama" is that "speech, action, and singing must be combined to act out a story, and then the meaning of the drama will be complete."

Since "true drama" must use "singing", it cannot be separated from opera, so "true drama must be related to opera".

However, in order for "opera" to become "real opera", it must also meet two conditions. One is "progress in music", that is, the opera music must have sufficient expressive power; the other is "changing from a narrative style to a representative style"

.

Taking this as a criterion, Wang Guowei believes that the ancient Chinese dramas that can be called "real opera" should start from Yuan Zaju and Southern Opera.

Regarding the development process of ancient Chinese drama, Wang Guowei made a general description: "Chinese drama, since the Han and Wei dynasties, has been combined with Baixi. In the Tang Dynasty, it was divided into two types: song and dance drama and comedy. Comedy was particularly popular in the Song Dynasty, and gradually Songs and dances were used to decorate the story, so the song and dance dramas were not based on songs and dances, but on stories. When the Yuan Dynasty Zaju came out, the system changed even more, and then my country began to have pure opera." Third, compare scientific research methods.

Wang Zhe'an, Wang Guowei's brother, said in the "Preface to Mr. Wang Jing'an's Posthumous Letter": "Although my elder brother's method of studying is similar to that of the Qianjia and Qianjia elders, it is actually beyond the scope of the Qianjia and Qianjia elders... This is something that can only be obtained from Western Europe.

Academic excellence and closeness are the help.” This “exquisite and close” research method is first of all the “two methods of synthesis and analysis” that Wang Guowei consciously proposed [1].

In the process of studying Chinese opera, he consciously used this method to "investigate its origins and understand its changes."

In 1908, Wang Guowei first compiled "Qu Lu", which is a relatively complete catalog of the works of ancient opera writers.

In 1909, he completed the article "Research on the Origin of Opera", which gave a general outline of the origin of ancient Chinese opera with the general outline of "operators use songs and dances to perform stories".

In the same year, he also completed "You Yu Lu", "Tang and Song Dynasty Daqu Examination", and "Lu Gui Book Compilation and Annotation". The first two books specifically examined the origin of ancient opera from the aspects of "story" and "song and dance".

In 1911, he completed the "An Examination of Roles in Ancient Drama", which examined the origins of ancient opera in detail from the aspect of "roles".

On the basis of a series of separate studies, and finally an overall comprehensive study, the giant "History of Song and Yuan Operas" was completed in three months.

"History of Song and Yuan Operas" received great attention from the academic community as soon as it was published.

Liang Qichao's "China's Academic History of the Past Three Hundred Years" said: "Recently, Wang Jing'an Guowei's governance of opera studies has been the most coherent, and he has written books such as "A Research on the Origin of Opera", "Qu Lu", and "History of Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties".

If opera science can become a specialized study in the future, Jing'an should be regarded as the most important ancestor." He also said: "Recently, Wang Jing'an Guowei has written "History of Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties", which is an unprecedented creation. Although the style is still open to discussion,

It will add immeasurable weight to the history community.