"You are too few!" Before the Shanghai Yue Opera Theater's classic "Dream of Red Mansions" started, "Brother Bao" Yang Tingna received many "complaints" from Beijing theater fans. They squatted as soon as the tickets were issued, causing 8 rows of seats to be empty in seconds. On the evening of January 4, the Shanghai Yue Opera Theater presented four classic Yue opera plays, "A Dream of Red Mansions", "Liang Shanbo Zhu Yingtai", "The Romance of the West Chamber" and "Xiang Lin's Wife", at the National Grand Theater's "100 Chinese Operas" intangible cultural heritage opera performance.
Full display of strength
"A Dream of Red Mansions" that you will never get tired of watching a thousand times, "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai" with colorful butterflies lingering for a long time, "The Romance of the West Chamber" for whom the wind is exposed in the middle of the night, and "The Story of the West Chamber" that asks the sky between life and death. "Sister Xianglin" is a four-part drama that brings together three troupes from Shanghai. From contemporary performing artist Fang Yafen to tenth-generation young Yue opera actors, the main cast is all Mesozoic actors. It is a rare appearance in recent years that fully demonstrates the overall strength of Shanghai Yue opera. .
"This is not only the first time for Shangyue, but also the first time for the National Center for the Performing Arts to plan and present it this way. It is inseparable from Shangyue's profound artistic accumulation." said Nan Hao, opera program planner of the National Grand Theater Performance Department. Joetsu brought such a large-scale performance lineup at the beginning of the year. Although the ticket opening time was short before the performance, the first show was still sold out. In Nan Hao's view, Shangyue has inherited the original Yue opera genre on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has also innovated based on the aesthetics of modern audiences. "Beijing audiences especially hope to see good works. This time Fang Yafen's "Sister Xianglin" has several I haven’t seen it in Beijing theaters for years.”
There are four performances in four days, which is also a big challenge for the stage design team. "Dream of Red Mansions" has a complicated set and many props, so it was arranged to be the first one on the first day. Xia Zhiyong, the stage manager of the Red Mansion Troupe, said that the team cooperates very well. Among the four performances, only "Dream of Red Mansions" was installed one day in advance. The other stages were dismantled overnight. The stage for that night's performance began to be installed the next morning, and the actors left at 4 p.m. Everything is in place in front of the stage.
The inheritance lives on
The classic shows are endless and the stories are endless. Backstage, Yang Tingna took a mouthful of rice while putting on makeup and said with a smile that she used to go to teacher Xu Yulan's house to learn opera, and her "ancestor" always told her to eat more meat to gain strength, but she couldn't touch rice because it would make her fatter. The first time Yang Tingna performed in "Dream of Red Mansions" was in Yancheng. Xu Yulan took charge of the scene and immediately called Yang Tingna into the room to talk about the play after the performance. When Yang Tingna made her debut on Shaw Stage, Qian Huili took leave from the crew of the TV series "Dream of Red Mansions" and returned to Shanghai to put on makeup for Yang Tingna to make her "calm down."
Among the four major classics, "A Dream of Red Mansions" and "Butterfly Lovers" are the flagship shows of the tour, while "The Romance of the West Chamber" is rarely used as a touring play. Chen Huidi, who plays Cui Yingying, remembers that when she first entered Shangyue after graduating from drama school, she became an actor in Group B of "The Romance of the West Chamber" under the guidance of artistic director Lu Ruiying. Later, Shangyue established a youth troupe, and Chen Huidi and her classmates had the opportunity to pass on this Yuan School classic on the stage. In this performance, Zhang Sheng is Wang Wanna, an outstanding representative of the tenth generation. When "Zhang Sheng" appeared on the stage in 1995, Chen Huidi joked that "this lady is a bit big" and it would be better not to act like a sister and brother in love. These four classics,
, have been developed through years of experience by artists and tested by the market, creating enduring classics. Wu Wei, Secretary of the Party Branch and President of Shanghai Yue Opera Theater, said that Shanghai Yue Theater has always focused on the three-way interaction of talents, repertoire and market, opened up the intangible cultural heritage market with systematic operations, created a future opera ecology with a forward-looking vision, and promoted the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage opera culture. Innovation and development.
Text/Xinmin Evening News Beijing Correspondent Zhao Yue
Editor/Qiao Ying
