Zhao Yanxia

02-0504Peking OperaTraditional OperaBeijingBatch 2 (2008)

Lineage & School of Heritage

Zhao Yanxia came from a family of opera performers and from childhood trained and learned opera under her parents' supervision. At seven she toured with her father Zhao Xiaolou, joining companies in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Wuhan and elsewhere; at 14 she went to Beijing and studied qingyi and huadan under Xun Huisheng and others; in 1947 she founded the Yanming Society, performing in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, and later worked for many years at the Beijing Peking Opera Company.

Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire

Female, Han ethnicity, born in 1928 in Wuqing, Hebei, now part of Tianjin. She is a national representative bearer of Peking Opera, a second-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, and a Peking Opera performing artist. While carrying on the performance style of the Xun school, Zhao Yanxia built on her own physical qualities and broke through conventional technique, achieving a distinctive manner in singing, declamation, acting and acrobatics that audiences greatly enjoy. Her range of roles was relatively broad, equally at home in civil and martial parts; her singing is melodious and graceful, her singing and declamation crisp, sweet and bright, and her articulation especially clear. Her representative works include Hongniang (The Matchmaker), Huatian Cuo (The Mistake at Huatian) and Bai She Zhuan (The Legend of the White Snake).

References & Archival Sources

Zhao Yanxia · National Representative Bearer Archive

Representative Items of This Bearer

Profile

Representative item: Peking Opera
Item code: Ⅳ-28
Category: Traditional Opera
Region: Beijing
Born: 1928
Batch: Batch 2 (2008)

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