Zhang Xiandu
Lineage & School of Heritage
From 1949 he studied Pingjiang opera performance under Zhang Lusu, a renowned artist of Jitou Pingjiang opera, specialising in the young male role (xiaosheng).
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
He has a thorough command of every role type in Pingjiang opera and possesses a comprehensive range of skills; he also works as a director. The productions he has directed are accessible and vivid, and they largely restore the genre's high-pitched (gaoqiang) character, in which the front stage sings unaccompanied while the back stage provides a supporting chorus, as well as its plain and deeply traditional performance style. These productions have appeared at many festivals at various levels and have been widely acclaimed.
Honors & Recognition
Born in October 1939 in Pingnan County, Fujian Province, he died in August 2019; he was of Han ethnicity. He was a national representative bearer of Pingnan Pingjiang opera, a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. When work to rescue and recover Pingjiang opera began in 2001, Zhang Xiandu, then fifty-nine, returned to the newly reconstituted Pingnan Jitou Pingjiang Opera Troupe as director and performer. There he helped rescue the genre and, despite the difficulties of transmitting Pingjiang opera, trained more than thirty emerging performers.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Pingnan Pingjiang Opera Ⅳ-115
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。