Questions about opera ！！！！！！！！！！！！！

I don't know how to answer, but this post has given me a long insight

I hope it will help you

1. Chinese Opera represented by the Kunqu Opera~

Kunqu Opera with its elegant name of "The Orchid" is also the only theater art that still retains a complete form of drama, and it has become a model of classical Chinese opera with its gorgeous and elegant language, elegant tunes and graceful and delicate performances. With its gorgeous and elegant language, elegant tunes and beautiful and delicate performances, Kunqu has become a model of classical Chinese opera, and is even known as the "mother opera".

Kunqu, also known as Kun (Mountain) Cavity, is said to have been created by Gu Jian, a native of Kunshan at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, with a history of more than 700 years, and it is one of the oldest types of traditional Chinese opera. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty (1552-1566), it was reformed by Wei Liangsui, resulting in a gentle and delicate tune known as "Shuimo Cavity". The compositions of the then playwright Liang Chenyu laid a solid literary foundation for Kunqu. In terms of accompaniment, in addition to strings, instruments such as sheng, xiao, pipe and flute were added, forming a combination of pipes and strings, which was a great improvement over the other popular voices at that time, and was so refreshing that it was soon popularized. By the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Kunqu expanded to all parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and became the type of opera that overwhelmed other southern opera voices. It was then brought to Beijing by the scholars, and became the main opera in the palace with Yiyang Opera, which was called "Official Opera" at that time, and from then on, it became the ally of the opera world. From the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty to the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty (1570-1800), it was the stage when the reputation of kunqu was the most brilliant and the achievements were the most remarkable. Tang Xianzu's Four Dreams of Linchuan - The Peony Pavilion, The Record of Nanlang, The Record of Handan, The Record of the Purple Hairpin, as well as Hong Sheng's The Palace of Eternal Youth, Kong Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan - became popular all over the world. Peach Blossom Fan" became an instant hit, and Kun Opera reached its heyday.

The cultural value of kunqu is mainly expressed in three aspects: script, music and performance. The script of Kunqu adopts the structure of the Song and Yuan dynasties' miscellaneous dramas and sagas, and each drama usually has 24 folds, each of which forms a unit of its own, with a relatively complete plot running through the overall plot, so that many single-folded dramas can be performed independently. In terms of literary language, it inherits the merits and strengths of ancient poems and Yuan operas, and adopts the style of long and short sentences, with gorgeous and elegant rhetoric. The music of kunqu is of the tune system, *** there are more than a thousand tunes, and the singing voice is delicate, and the words are well-spoken. The performance of Kunqu is full of songs and dances, with a very high degree of choreography and programatization. Since the words of Kunqu are too elegant, the singing is often accompanied by dance movements to express the inner feelings of the characters, which greatly increases the difficulty of the performance. Kunqu, which combines poetry, music, song, dance and opera, occupies an important position in the history of Chinese literature, opera, music and dance, and has had a far-reaching and direct influence on many varieties of opera.

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2. Ancient Greek Drama~

The first exact record of Greek drama can be found in 534 B.C.E. In this year, the organization of "Dai Shen Festival of the City" was changed, and a competition of tragedy performance was added into the activities, so the drama must have existed before this year. Theater must have existed before this time. The only dramatist of this period is Thespis, the winner of the first tragedy competition, who was also the first actor known to the world, so that the actors were often called Thespians from then on. The Thespian drama was relatively simple; it consisted of a single actor and a song team. This does not mean that there was only one character in the play, but that all the roles were played by the same actor. The actor used a mask to change his identity, and when he left the stage to change into another character, the troupe sang and danced to fill in the gaps, and so the troupe became a major element of early theater. Face-to-face confrontation between rival characters, which later generations regarded as a sine qua non of the theater, was, of course, impossible in a situation where there was only one actor.

Greek theater festivals

From the time of the first tragedy contests to the first years of the fifth century B.C., few performances were recorded, and no plays were preserved in their entirety. At that time there were four festivals in Athens in honor of Dionysia,*** three of which were related to the theater, and they were:

Rural Dionysia (Rural Dionysia). It is held at the end of December in the countryside among the tribes in turn, and is presided over by the chiefs of the villages. The most important event is the phallus parade, in which the parade holds up exaggerated symbols of male genitalia, sings and dances along the way, and jokes and swears with the audience, in order to provide entertainment during the agricultural period and to pray for a good harvest in the coming year. In addition to this primitive religious entertainment, the affluent tribes added theatrical performances in the fifth century. Performances could be revivals of old plays or plays rejected by the city's Daijin festivals. Only the richest had occasional contests that included the premieres of new plays. In the fourth century B.C., the number of such performances apparently increased, and because the dates of the performances varied from place to place, and because of the close proximity of the places, those who were interested were able to travel from place to place to see the different performances.

Lenaia. Just as there are many different sects of Buddhism and Christianity, there are also many sects that worship Daijin, and Lenaia is one of them. It is not known when or where it began to perform, but since its performances were officially recognized (442B.C.), the venue was transferred to the city of Athens, but where the theatre was located is a matter of debate. The performances were mainly comedies (442B.C. added tragedies later on), and took place at the end of January for about three or four days. At this time of the year, when the winds and waves were strong and there were fewer visitors from abroad, the audience was mostly Athenian, and there was no need to worry about "publicity", so the performance was a good opportunity to laugh at the abuse and ridicule the city's personnel.

The City or Creat Dionysia was held at the end of March. It was at this festival that the first tragedy contests were held, and around the beginning of the fifth century, probably to coincide with the reorganization of the Athenian tribes, the Dionysian Song and Dance Contests were also held. Comedies also began to be performed here after they were officially recognized (487 B.C.). Moreover, satyr plays have always been attached to tragedies. Therefore, the city's Daijin festival, after continuous enhancement, was on a grand scale in the fifth century B.C. and lasted for about six days or so.

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3. Indian Sanskrit Drama~

Born more than a thousand years ago and once very prosperous Indian Sanskrit Drama somehow disappeared later, and the only thing that has survived is "Shakuntala", The only survivors are literary plays such as Shakuntala, The Little Mud Cart, and theoretical writings on the theater.