What are the main artistic connotations of traditional opera costumes?

Traditional Chinese theater costumes are commonly known as "head". Theatrical costumes belonging to the traditional Chinese theatrical performing arts belong to the "artistic system of writing", which is a kind of artistic costume refined by the processing of living costumes, similar to the historical living costumes to some extent, but not the historical living costumes, but the wonderful imaginative costumes between the similarity and the dissimilarity. Traditional theatrical costumes rely on and depend on the aesthetics of materialized costumes, matching the programmatic, virtual and hypothetical nature of traditional theatrical performances, and serving the highest aesthetic goal of "expressing the feelings of the characters". It has the meaning of the beauty of program, rhythmic beauty, decorative beauty and symbolic beauty.

Expression

Clothing, as the most intuitive external form of the aesthetic object in the drama, strengthens its own initiative in the synthesis of the drama through the three main forms of expression: realism, romanticism, and symbolism, so that it can better serve the shaping of the character and the expression of the personality of the characters in the drama.

Tracing back to the origin of the theater - in the 5th century BC, the ancient Greeks dressed themselves up as the ideal gods and goddesses, danced to their heart's content, walked, jumped, and sang in the carnival of the gods and goddesses of wine, thus expressing a supernatural power "to make the animals talk, and to make the earth flow out of buttermilk and honey". The costumes, which are the most intimate with people, together with the dancers' gestures, movements, and expressions, show the joyful souls of the dancers who are in the throes of ecstasy. In this most primitive form of theater, the performance function of theater costumes has been initially embodied: to reproduce the image of the gods in the ideal of the ancient Greeks. Theater from life, and above life. Therefore, theater costumes are naturally different from life costumes, it is more typical of the shape, the performance of the character image. Theater costumes are also an integral part of the art of synthesis, it is with the lines, action, set, lighting, music and other factors **** with the composition of the overall system of the theater. Because of the comprehensive nature of this theater structure, it is decided that the theater costume itself is a multi-directional projection factor, a form of language that can stimulate creativity and strengthen the expressive power.

With the continuous development of the theater and the continuous improvement and standardization of the theater system, the expressive power of the theater costumes has become more and more prominent. In the drama, clothing as the most intuitive form of externalization of the aesthetic object, from the prologue to the final scene, always provides the potential background and emotional information in the play, guiding the audience into a particular situation. In this process, according to the requirements of the plot and the need to shape the type of role, you can establish the following main forms of expression of theater costumes.

Realism

Realism is to conform to historical authenticity. Costume designers refer to the historical background of the time and possible photographic sources, documentary records, human customs and the meaning of each costume accessory, and strive to reproduce life with the authenticity of the costume. In strict historical drama, realism is one of the forms of expression that costume designers must and must take; in modern drama, realism is also emphasized, and its significance has gone beyond the single reproduction function of "copying history" with the development of dramatic art and become an effective means to strengthen and promote the interpretation of concepts. For example, in December 1996, the Beijing Film Academy produced a modern dance drama, 100 Verbs: Dance in Progress, with the theme of returning to nature. The whole play uses body language to express the details of the commonplace: washing, cooking, bathing, the dancers appear in the play in the most realistic life costumes, and dramatize the body language of life through dance. The "bathing" scene in the play is shown as a woman in silk soft floral pants and a low-necked nightgown sitting in a basin, scooping up water and pouring it all over her body from the top of her head, and then starting a dance in the basin related to the water and the basin. During the performance, the most down-to-earth, unprocessed and basic effects of the audience's voices, shouts, water, gasps, and the dancer's living costume sublimate and magnify the aesthetics of the theater, scratching through experiences such as distance and bringing the audience closer. Here, the stage and life, costume and body, body and life become the same combination, the most realistic life attire gives the dancers a most colorful decoration, to achieve and deepen the theme of "return to the human nature". As Wen Hui, the playwright, said, "As long as the character of a person is brought to life, it is the most beautiful dance, and there is nothing more natural and powerful than living back to oneself." Then, you can think of it this way: in this dance drama, there is no costume than the life dress more accurate, more expressive of the theme.

Romanticism

The word "Romanticism" first appeared in literature. Artistically Romanticism abandoned the ancient Greco-Roman paradigm and declared the precedence of man and individuality over all else, and it responded to the cold kingdom of reason with intense feeling, passion and imagination. Romanticism" in theatrical costume is to give the costume a broader, free space for imagination, so that it can be stylized with the image of the play***. This form of expression in the "Othello", "the seventh seal", "Qu Yuan" (such as the "mountain ghost" image) have appeared, the Italian playwright Puccini's opera "Turandotka" (also known as "Turandot") embodied more fully.

Puccini's opera "Turandotka" makes a thorough imagination of Chinese dress culture, of course, this imagination is superimposed with the plot itself. The protagonist of the play, Turandotka, is a princess in ancient Chinese legend, who is haughty and cruel. In the play, she wears a long, moonlight-colored, pleated gown that would have been impossible to find in a Chinese royal court (Puccini, who had never been to China, incorporated images of China from Marco Polo's travels and fantasies into his creations, and even a "water goddess" is featured). When Turandob wears the towering crown of Puccini's imagination - a crown made of moonlight-white crystal jade pieces, appearing in an equally cold moonlight-white background, her nobility, beauty and coolness come to the forefront; the three scandalous ministers of the play, "Ping", "Bang" and "Bo" (also known as "Ping", "Pang" and "Peng" in Chinese Imperial Temple version), are wearing kimono-like court dresses in dark red, royal blue and purple. To emphasize the comicality, their official hats are small, but the rounded 幞檚 on their hats are large. When they bring sandalwood fans in their hands, in the Chinese music "Jasmine Flower" looms, a strong Chinese flavor mixed with the beautiful exotic mood from the stage to diffuse, so that the audience in their comical image of the guidance of easy and happy into the plot. In this opera, Puccini and his costume designers successfully recreated ancient Chinese costumes, accurately portraying the characters' personalities and reflecting Puccini's ideal image of "Turandotka". He created his own style by combining the legends of ancient times with the aesthetic interests of today's people and his own aesthetic ideals. Although the costumes in the play do not strictly follow the evidence, it is in this kind of creative activity that the real and the imaginary find a good fit, and the costumes used match the characters and make the situation shine. The effect is similar to the background music of the play "Jasmine", which received a new life on the Italian stage and aroused the aesthetic passion of the audience.

The costumes in the September 1998 Chinese temple version of Turandotka, although very "Chinese", were still romanticized by the designer. Because the play is a "legend", there is no historical data, the rehearsal becomes a pure artistic creation, which brings great imagination and freedom to the sets and costumes of the play. It is aesthetically pleasing, and can be called a "dream statement" (German dramatist Schaake), but into the hearts of the audience.

Symbolism

In other themes of the theater, the first task of the costume designer is to express the character, social archetypes or mental states by means of symbolism, which reminds us of Victor Hugo's poem: "Wear the spirit of pure weaving and white linen". Symbolism as a genre first originated in the field of poetry. 1886 the French writer Moreas published a literary manifesto in Le Figaro newspaper, which regarded the poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé school as symbolism. Because of the lineage of literature and art (for example, much of the theater is drawn from literature in the epic or poetic genres), this school quickly approached the theater from poetry, and quite naturally influenced the sets and costumes in the theater as well. Symbolism, suggestion, and metaphor are used to represent various ideas. Symbolism is a high degree of unity between image and meaning, and the symbolic carrier of the symbolic meaning is found by association to express the most universal meaning, in pursuit of the inner "highest reality".

The symbolism of clothing is expressed in both direct and indirect forms. In Tchaikovsky's opera "Boots and Shoes", the baritone who plays the devil is dressed in black, and in traditional Chinese opera, the costumes of the student, the dancer, the purist, the last, and the clown, etc., are all direct symbols. The use of direct symbolism continues and has evolved in modern art - in the late 1990s, 32-year-old fashion designer Fred Satel conceived and completed all the costumes for the musical Notre Dame de Paris, the entry in the French competition for excellence in singing held in Cannes. Fred said, "Creating costumes for theater characters must penetrate the surface of the characters and understand their hearts." His bold and creative use of symbolism in the costume design of this production successfully challenged centuries-old theatrical traditions, and he brilliantly completed all the costumes for the heroine, Esmeralda, and the other 120 characters. She designed a green dress for Esmeralda, a symbol of bad luck, saying: "Esmeralda is a gypsy girl 'made' of grass and wood, with a spirit of debauchery, a leaf that sways with the sun and the wind, and the dress she always wears can only be green". The conceit is better understood by reading Hugo's original. Esmeralda, a woman with gypsy blood, wanders around and fluctuates, but is beautiful, youthful and kind, using green leaves as an imagery to symbolize her poetic fluttering and fragility, and ultimately unable to escape the fate of being swallowed up by hypocrisy, greed, and falsehood. Another important character in the play, Quasimodo, the bell-ringer, though ugly on the outside, is angelic and kind on the inside, and reads a lot of books (which is wisdom) in his isolated life in Notre Dame, which reminds Fred of a Buddhist. Hence the choice of costume, a long, striped robe with patches, in a burgundy color reminiscent of the Tibetan lamas in China. The patches, which appear in all of the play's costumes, are Fred's mark, symbolizing the sublimation of wounds.

Fred's design idea was to find a symbolic vehicle for the meaning of the symbol in an associative way to achieve "a high degree of unity of image and meaning". Fred's design is an excellent example of the use of symbolism.

Indirect symbolism refers to the use of clothing as a carrier, a metaphor for the character's emotional changes, the ups and downs of the plot and development. A more prominent use of indirect symbolism is the "death of Ophelia" scene in the movie "The Prince's Revenge", which was released in China in the late 1970s and based on the play "Hamlet" by British dramatist Laurence Olivier. The conflict between beauty and death in the play brings the tragedy to its climax. In this scene, "flower" as a dress beyond the meaning of dress, become the plot guide - "beauty" was taken by death, become a tragic image, it deepens the plot, touches the audience's emotional moment experience.

Costume

One of the artistic means of shaping the external image of a character. It is used to reflect the character's identity, age, personality, ethnicity and occupational characteristics, as well as to show the specific times, living customs and prescribed situations in the play. In Chinese opera, it is customarily referred to as the "head of the line".