"Mirror Image of Classical Opera and Folk Customs" Returns to the soil where opera originated
2024-08-19
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Peng Hengli
Opera is synonymous with traditional Chinese drama. Over the past 100 years, many famous scholars have emerged in the study of opera, which can be regarded as a prominent discipline. Opera has the most Chinese cultural characteristics, but the perspective and method of opera research are deeply influenced by the West. Just as the traditional classics, history, philosophy and collections are divided into literature, history and philosophy by modern academics, opera research is also divided into three academic orientations - opera literature, opera morphology and opera culture. The last category attempts to return to the soil where opera originated, study the relationship between "soil" and "flowers" from the perspective of folk culture, and explore the multiple values of opera.
The earliest academic understanding of the relationship between opera and folk culture can be traced back to Wang Guowei's "A Study of Song and Yuan Operas". He once asked, "Did the rise of singing and dancing begin with ancient witchcraft?", linking the origin of opera with witchcraft activities. In the 1920s, the Peking University folk song movement emerged, and intellectuals such as Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren, and Gu Jiegang, who were influenced by Western academics, launched a "revolution with eyes looking down". The academic community has devoted great enthusiasm to the research fields of myths, folk songs, stories, proverbs, opera, etc. Zheng Zhenduo listed opera as an important part of popular literature in "History of Chinese Popular Literature", and collected and sorted out a large number of ancient opera scripts, laying a material foundation for the study of opera folklore.
In the 1980s, opera moved towards folklore studies like discovering a new continent. In the 1980s, folk ritual drama and sacrificial drama represented by Nuo opera became the hot spots of opera research, and opera history research also began to move from the study to the fields and collect materials from folk culture. For example, Japanese scholar Kazunari Tanaka conducted a folklore survey in South China and successively published works such as "History of Chinese Drama" and "Chinese Clans and Drama". He studied opera from the perspective of folklore and almost reconstructed the history of Chinese opera.
Opera and folklore are both inclusive and independent. Folk culture and people's lives are the soil for the birth of opera. The cultural genes in them are refined and conveyed through performance and creative practice, becoming an important part of opera and determining the appearance of opera. The purpose of the book "Mirror Image of Classical Opera and Folklore" is to reveal the characteristics of ancient opera as an alternative "folklore" through a systematic combing of folk culture in opera on the basis of predecessors, and to show the dynamic relationship between art and life.
The embryo of opera appeared at least in the Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago. The history of scripts that can be found is at least a thousand years. The long evolution has made opera present different forms and appearances in different historical stages, which are mainly reflected in the script structure, scale, music, singing style, performance form and other aspects. Yuan Zaju usually has only four acts and adopts the "one person singing" method, which is very different from the later operas that often have dozens of acts. The reason why opera presents different morphological characteristics in different stages is precisely due to its long development process.
Drama imitates life and strives to imitate it as realistically as possible, which leads to a large number of "life details" entering the opera. These folk mirror images of the lives of the ancients, from the perspective of folklore, constitute a unique "opera folklore", which is of great reference value for the study of ancient folk culture.
The selection of folk materials in opera is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
The theme of the drama is that the drama is keen to express. There are a large number of dramas about love and marriage, such as "The Romance of the West Chamber" and "The Peony Pavilion". In the process of expressing marriage customs, the drama has a realistic imitation side, such as hiring a matchmaker to propose marriage and verifying the birth date before concluding the marriage; the man has to go to the woman's house to marry on the wedding day; drinking the wedding wine and singing the song of the tent in the bridal chamber ceremony. At the same time, there is a side that transcends reality. Young men and women often go against "the orders of their parents and the words of the matchmaker". This "heretical" behavior shows the transcendence and artistic dynamism of the drama.
There are many festival customs in classical opera, such as neighbors congratulating each other during the Spring Festival; Lantern Festival in the village; visiting graves during the Cold Food Festival and Qingming Festival; archery and ball-playing during the Dragon Boat Festival; worshiping the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl on the Qixi Festival; and watching the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival in August. Opera is keen on depicting festivals. On the one hand, it hopes to bring the festive atmosphere into the opera. On the other hand, festivals are also an important performance season for opera. Opera performances correspond to real festivals to increase interest.
Food is the first necessity of the people, so operas naturally have to express related themes. For example, drinking and drinking tea are widely used in operas, which shows that tea and wine occupy an important position in the lives of ancient people. The dietary preferences of different dynasties and regions are reflected in operas. The characters in Yuan Zaju like to eat mutton and drink milk tea, which is directly related to the dietary preferences of the nomadic peoples in northern my country. Operas show dietary customs, and dietary performances help operas shape artistic images, such as the insatiable greed of the villains in food. Magical food also often appears in operas, such as the elixir of Taishang Laojun and the peaches of Queen Mother, showing the rich imagination of the ancients. There are many more.
Mirror image refers to the image in the mirror. Opera is a mirror that reflects the life of the ancients. The "folk customs" in opera are actually the image in the mirror of the life of the ancients. On the one hand, the folk custom mirror image in opera originates from the real life of the ancients, which is determined by the characteristics of drama; on the other hand, all the folk custom scenes in the drama are required by the plot and are the virtualization of folk customs, so they have virtual characteristics. The problem of distortion in specific opera works is the focus of research.
Opera is a literary and artistic form born from Chinese culture, and is also an important cultural representation of Chinese traditional culture in the field of drama. The cultural representativeness of opera is no less than that of Chinese characters, Confucianism and the Four Great Inventions.
The relationship between opera and folk life and folk culture is extremely close, and interdisciplinary research is still an area to be explored in opera research. Although some scholars have conducted interdisciplinary research using Yuan Dynasty opera as an example, it must be noted that the Yuan Dynasty was only a hundred years in the development of opera. After the Yuan Dynasty, opera experienced nearly six centuries of rapid development. This study is based on the research of predecessors and attempts to cover the entire history of opera development with a theoretical perspective, taking a different perspective from predecessors to study the relationship between opera and folk culture in opera. The reason why Chinese opera has gone through thousands of years and has taken a completely different development path from Western drama should be found in the soil that gave birth to opera.
(The author is the director of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Research Center of Henan University and the chairman of the Henan Folk Artists Association)
(Source: Beijing Daily)
