1. Imagine that you have a friend who has never seen or heard a Peking opera. How would you introduce him or her to the subject? Use approximately three pages to write a systematic introduction to this venerable art. Draw on materials from reading, lectures, films, and listening to factually illustrate and conceptually form your essay.
Peking Opera, also known as Jingju, is one of the most splendid art form one can imagine – it integrates acting, dancing, singing, acrobatics, orchestrating, scriptwriting, costumes and make ups, and most importantly, imagination and creativity, all onto a real time life stage. It is the most well known and developed of the many theatre forms from China, a country with over 5000 years of history, hence embracing a depth of usable myths and stories ranging from different time periods for the opera to be based on. It is also where legend comes to life by collaborating performers, musicians, and also interactions with the audiences.
In Peking Opera, performers on stage use a very stylish language. They talk, cry and laugh, walk and move their bodies in a special way. For example, one type of aria is often sung when the actor wants to show that the character is crying, and actors shake their hands in a rhythmic way when they want to show that they’re furious. Audiences have to use their imagination and some previous knowledge about the story in order to fully appreciate what is going on the stage. The drama world is being isolated from the realistic world by the consistently extraordinary appearance, language and manners of the actors rather than by the curtains, footlights and high stages in Western style operas. Scenery is often very simple in Peking Opera, and audiences need to imagine the staging according to the discernible hints given by the actors in their singing and movement styles. Due to the high requirements of performing skills, actors of Peking Opera were very harsh and demandingly trained, usually since young, and would specialize in learning a certain role type afterwards. There are four main role types: Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou. Dan is the female role type, and the other role types are all male roles, with the exception of Chou category which sometimes includes female roles. Actors choose their role types according to their personality, musical and acrobatic talents rather than biological gender. Cross gender acting is very common, i.e., a male actor taking up a female role type or vice versa. Male and female role types use different melodic forms and singing techniques. The singing techniques are divided into the chest (big) voice, which the male roles usually use and the head (small) voice, which is like the falsetto in Western Opera singing and is usually used by the female parts. As compared to the Western opera singing, the timbre of the singing is sharper and normally when one first hears it, it appears to be too piercing. The shrilling tone quality of both the singing and the accompaniment is in fact hinting the origin of Peking Opera – it was first shown inside temples during religious festivals, and the environment was usually crowded with people and other noise.
Under each role type category, the focal division is between civil (wen) and military (wu), rather than tragic or comedic in Western Opera. Civil roles usually carry more singing parts while military roles often have parts that require superb virtuosity in acrobatics. Under the Sheng category, there are laosheng (old men), wusheng (martial men) and xiaosheng (young men) role types. For the Dan category, there are qingyi (virtuous and Confucius women), huadan (young and lively women), daomadan (young martial women), wudan (martial women) and laodan (old women) role types. For the Jing category, the most important role type is the dahualian (great painted face) roles, which are usually the leading characters in a play in which they have a splendidly painted face and the highest shoes among all role types. For the Chou category, there are wenchou (civil clowns), wuchou (martial clowns) and caidan (old female clowns) role types. The Chou role type often “talks” in an understandable way to the common public, while the other role types often sing in a unique style which is hard for one to understand without training and experience. All role types have their unique dressing and make-ups styles, and audiences usually can easily distinguish one role type from another according to their costumes, singing and acting style.
Just like how role types are divided into civil and martial styles, the orchestra of Peking Opera also has the two elements – wenchang (civil) and wuchang (martial). Wenchang consists of melodic instruments such as the Jinghu, and Wuchang consists of mainly percussion instruments. The leader of the orchestra is the Sigu from the wuchang, who is responsible of playing the ban (clappers) and danpigu (pig skin drums) and hence determining the main rhythm and tempo of the songs. Although Wenchang and wuchang play together, wenchang will be more predominating throughout the singing parts and wuchang more prevailing during the introductions, acting and acrobatic parts.
The historical background of Peking Opera is also what makes it so particular. The year 1790 is commonly regarded to the rise of Peking Opera, and by the early nineteenth century, together with the Kunqu opera form, it reached its prominent popularity all over the country, enjoyed by the public from different social classes and also by the Qing court. The Empress Dowager from the late-Qing dynasty is even a great enthusiast of the Peking Opera. She rather spent money on building her summer palace and a prestigious Peking Opera stage than to invest it to the army troops during the terrible war of China against several countries at late 19th century. At the early 20th century, there were several well-known Peking Opera performers, and among them were Mei Lang-Fang, who is commonly regarded as the most famous Peking Opera actor in history. His performances around the world since the 1930’s introduced this unique Eastern art to the Western society. Partly because of how his troop organized the shows and also because of the social situation, American, European and Russian audiences all gave high remarks to Peking Opera. Hence the Chinese government (both the Republicans and the Communists) even made used of this art form in diplomacy. However, after the Communist ruled over China at 1949, Peking Opera is in its declination. One of the reasons is that it is regarded to a “traditional, old and Confucius” art form, and this is something absolutely suggesting opposition to the political situation in China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Peking Opera was banned from the country and any artists involved in it were ill-treated. This is a “dead” period of Peking Opera, and also of most regional dramas in China. It is after the 1980’s when the government is less strict in all the limitations to Peking Opera as well as all traditional arts that this art form is finally slowly becoming “alive” again.
By this 21st century, Peking Opera becomes one of the many opera forms audiences come to appreciate, both traditionally and contemporarily. It might not be the dominating one ever again, just as how it did a hundred years ago. Nevertheless, it is still one of the best art form to be examined when one wants to learn about the Chinese culture and arts because it puts Chinese music, dancing, acting, costumes, writing and history together, and it definitely carries sufficient depth and maturity to satisfy any curiosity and admiration one has upon the dramatic world.
2. Drawing your answer mainly from class lecture, describe Peking opera’s musical and textual structures.
The rise of Peking Opera is commonly regarded to the celebration event taking place at Beijing at 1790 when the xipi and erhuang mode came together. The xipi and erhuang tunes are believed to be derived from ancient Chinese scales. Peking Opera is sometimes called the “Pihuang”, which combines the last syllable from both modes. The musical structure and sometimes even the textual structure of Peking Opera are thus very dependent on this Pihuang system, at least until the 1940’s.
Under the Pihuang system, the xipi family and the erhuang family are distinguished from each other. A mode/tune family is a collection of notes with special relationship and hierarchy between them. The xipi and erhuang modes differ in the matter of pitch, rhythm, tempo, timbre (tone color) and dramatic associations. They gives people a different point of arrival in a tune even they share the same notes, the same instruments are tuned different in different modes and they have very distinguished modal rhythm. Xipi melodies are generally faster and brighter. The voices’ tone quality between each mode can be easily distinguished when heard, and even the instruments’ tone quality is different. In the erhuang mode, the timbre of the jinghu and jingerhu is usually darker. Xipi is often associated with more optimistic dramas, while erhuang is often used during sad and dark situations.
Under each tune family, there are also different aria types. They are developed from the tunes and there are two main categories of aria types: unmetered and metered. For the metered types, beats are counted in “eyes and clappers” – Yan and Ban, so called the ban-yan system. For example, the 4/4 time in the Western music system is called one ban three yan in the Chinese system, or ban-yan-yan-yan. 4/4 is used in slow meter aria, known as the manban. 2/4, which is ban-yan-ban-yan with ban representing the accented beat and yan the unaccented beat, is the primary meter (yuanban)for male roles. The primary meter aria for female roles is still 4/4. Fast meter aria, also known as the huaiban, used the 1/4 which is ban-ban-ban-ban. One other variation is the ErLiu (two-six) meter, and it is counted in 1/4 also. Hence, the pulse is basically divided in binary.
For the textual structure, each phrase in the melody is 7 or 10 syllable long. Since Chinese words are all pronounced in one syllable for each word, it also means that each phrase is 7 or 10 words long. The seven word phrase is divided into three sections – 3, 2, 2, while the ten word phrase is divided into 3, 3, 2, 2 or 3, 3, 4. In an aria belonging to xipi tune family, the first word of the phrase will be sung on an unaccented beat, while for the aria of erhuang family the first word is on an accented beat.
Male melodies and female melodies are differentiated under each tune family also. With the exception of the xiaosheng role and the laodan role, all male roles are singing the male form of the arias and female roles the female form of the arias. Female forms are often more ornamented and moving forwardly. Since Chinese melodies and lyrics comes commonly in couplets – an upper line with a closing line—one can distinguish the opening line from a closing line and a male form aria versus female form aria by the cadential pitch of the voices and instruments. For example, in xipi mode, male roles will end their opening line is the second note of the scale, while female roles end theirs with the sixth note of the scare. For the closing line, male roles will end their lines with the first note of the scale while female roles will end the closing lines in the fifth note of the scale. An opening line is always followed by a closing line.
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Note: all translations from chinese are in mandarin. This is an easy class honestly, and I didn't put too much effort in the essays....I got full credits for all the quizes and exams so far, so I won't bother myself to proof read the essays.....well, I am going to bed now!!!
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