What is excerpt?

1. Excerpts are a form of expression of opera stage art that emerged during the period when opera genres were maturing and declining.

It appeared roughly in the late Ming Dynasty.

Since the Yuan drama's four-fold and one-part model had long been broken, legendary scripts of the Ming and Qing Dynasties often came out with forty or fifty pieces. The performances lasted for several days and nights, and the performers and spectators were overwhelmed, so the troupe chose to perform performances from the entire play.

It is more exciting and the plot is relatively complete and is performed individually.

Excerpts became a fashion in late Ming society.

Its emergence is the result of the simultaneous interaction of many factors such as social and historical development, cultural environment evolution, artistic maturity of drama types, fullness of dramatic performance skills, and improvement of the audience's aesthetic taste.

The famous anthology of opera excerpts at the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, "Zhu Baiqiu", contains more than 400 excerpts from more than 80 Kunqu opera works and more than 50 excerpts from more than 30 Bangzi opera plays.

However, although most of the excerpts are the essence, after all, they are only fragments of the original content, and some are even just a display of the unique skills of artists of a certain genre.

From the perspective of the history of opera, it can be said that no opera type has been revitalized and prospered solely by performing excerpts.

In today's society where the resources invested in the art of opera are extremely limited, the long-term focus on inheriting and performing excerpts of operas, rather than focusing on the creation and performance of complete plays, has left contemporary audiences, especially the majority of young audiences, and of course foreign audiences, always "missing"

"The true face of Mount Lu" is a method of giving up the basics and pursuing the last, achieving half the result with twice the result.

From the perspective of the law of artistic development, for a long time, only talking about inheritance, not innovation and development, only talking about form, not paying attention to content will only suffocate the vitality of the overall development of opera art.

2. Excerpts are essentially a way of displaying opera performance voices and skills. It is difficult for the audience to fully appreciate the literature, language, voice, performance skills, music and stage art including facial makeup, costumes and props of dramatic art.

A comprehensive beauty.

The essential characteristic of Chinese opera is that it uses songs and dances to tell stories.

The classic excerpts of various dramas that have been handed down either focus on singing or on performance skills. They are rare and difficult to show the audience a relatively complete drama content.

In the contradiction between artistic content and form, excerpts basically strengthen the secondary aspect that promotes the development of the contradiction. The beauty of form becomes the main artistic feature of excerpts, and the main aspect of drama content is actually downplayed.

Therefore, from the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, what it provides to the audience, especially those who are not familiar with the full picture of the original work, is essentially an incomplete artistic image that is difficult to grasp accurately, and some are even cut, dismembered, and distorted.

artistic image, which will inevitably lead to misunderstandings.

Therefore, in a certain sense, excerpts are just a kind of artistic fast food. Expecting to rely on them to cultivate batches of audiences who love and are in love with national drama art in the new era is tantamount to scratching the surface.

3. The excerpts are misleading to contemporary audiences (except for a few theater fans), including foreign audiences, and are not conducive to showing the complete and unique features of Chinese opera art and culture to the world.

In today's opera theaters, excerpts are mainly applauded by old theater fans who understand the plot and are familiar with the original works. They either love to close their eyes and relish the famous tunes and verses to the sound of silk and bamboo, or they only do somersaults, zombie toppling, and face-changing.

The stunts passed down from the predecessors such as shaking feathers and wings are applauded.

For most contemporary audiences, especially young audiences, the effect of excerpts is almost the same as an acrobatic or musical concert. The complete aesthetic image of Chinese opera art is greatly reduced in excerpts.

Over the past few decades, most of the Chinese traditional drama projects we have sent abroad for overseas exchanges include Peking operas such as "Sanchakou" and "Sitting in the Palace".

And like Guan Hanqing's "The Injustice of Dou E", Wang Shifu's "The Romance of the West Chamber", Ma Zhiyuan's "Autumn in the Han Palace", Tang Xianzu's "The Peony Pavilion", Kong Shangren's "The Peach Blossom Fan", Hong Sheng's "The Palace of Eternal Life" are among the best in the world.

Chinese opera classics are also dazzling in the theater world, but we have not made great efforts to restore their youth and "live" them again on the stage of today's China and the world, so as to fully display the infinite essence of Chinese literature and dramatic charm they contain.

To sum up, when we bring five thousand years of Chinese culture into the 21st century, the art of opera is indispensable.

In the strategy of revitalizing Chinese opera, neither the national authorities nor the opera art community can miss any more strategies and opportunities.

It would be a historic mistake to think that by restoring a few excerpts and performing a few excerpts, we have done a great job of innovating and inheriting and developing Chinese opera.