Daxian Opera
01 · Historical Records
Daxian opera is generally held to have a certain connection with the Liyuanxi (Pear Garden play) of the Tang court, and in the course of its evolution and development it also inherited the tradition of the northern ququ of Song-Yuan zaju. Since the 1990s, as entertainment programmes have grown ever more varied, the performance market for Daxian opera has continually contracted.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Daxian opera, formerly called the Gongxing troupe and also called Xianzi opera, is an ancient and rare multi-vocal-style genre; it is centred on Kaifeng and Puyang in Henan Province and is current in north-eastern Henan, southern Hebei and south-western Shandong. Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain. The vocal music of Daxian opera belongs to the qupai (tune-pattern) system and consists mainly of five great suites such as Hailihua and Jiangtou Jingui together with sanqu such as Shanpo Yang and Bubu Jiao; in addition it has taken in part of the music of the Qingyangqiang, Shipaiqiang, xiansuo gaoqiang, Luoluoqiang and other folk suqu and xiaoling. It has more than four hundred qupai of all kinds, of which one hundred and eighty-odd have now been excavated and collated. The accompaniment of Daxian opera is divided into ruichang (soft field) and yingchang (hard field). The principal instruments of the soft field include the sanxian, xidi, dadi, hengdi and sheng; the xidi is an instrument peculiar to Daxian opera, and pieces accompanied by it are called xiqu (fine pieces), while those accompanied by the dadi, dizi and hengdi are called cuqu (coarse pieces). The hard field, besides the ordinary percussion instruments, also uses the sida shan (four great fans), the jianzi hao and the luohao (conch horn), to bring out a tense and stirring atmosphere. In the vocal style of Daxian opera the qupai change very frequently and the pitch intervals leap widely; the actors enunciate the words in the true (natural) voice, while the drawn-out passages are carried in the falsetto. The role types of Daxian opera are divided into five sheng, five dan and five painted-face types, and the painted-face designs are delicate and carefully worked out, rich in individuality. To this day Daxian opera still preserves in its original flavour the traditional “tiaojiaguan” play as well as the “huaji xi” (comic play), “shuanchu yanduan” and “chibo xi” of Song-Yuan zaju; its performance takes the plum-blossom boxing and hong boxing as its framework, and is rough, fiery, archaic and of deep power. The movement and special-skill passages are staged with real weapons and real danger, thrilling and stirring; some of the tour-de-force skills such as “xiao liuchuan” (shaving the willow pole), “da wubacai”, “da shangdiao”, “shui sankongqiao” and “zawa” leave the audience involuntarily exclaiming. At present Henan has only two professional performing troupes, the Puyang Daxian Opera Troupe and the Huaxian Daxian Opera Troupe. Because funding is tight, the actors' income has fallen year by year, the conditions for survival and performance have deteriorated sharply, performing talent is running out, and many plays, qupai and special skills have been lost. Some one hundred qupai and more than two hundred plays now await excavation; only one person still masters the great Tang-Song suites and the qupai music of Daxian opera, and he is already close to seventy, so protection is urgently needed.
Rebelling at Five Passes
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
Black Stone Pass
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
The Yang Mansion Selects Generals
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
The Battle of Luoyang
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
Marching Down to Southern Tang
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
Sun Wuzi Raises an Army
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
Yellow Flower Temple
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
The Romance of the Western Chamber
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
Liangjia Mountain
Daxian opera once had more than five hundred plays, of which about a hundred survive; their content centres on the struggle between loyal and treacherous ministers, on warfare and campaigns, and on ridding the people of local tyrants. Its representative plays include Rebelling at Five Passes, Black Stone Pass, The Yang Mansion Selects Generals, The Battle of Luoyang, Marching Down to Southern Tang, Sun Wuzi Raises an Army, Yellow Flower Temple, The Romance of the Western Chamber and Liangjia Mountain.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Daxian opera, formerly called the Gongxing troupe and also called Xianzi opera, is centred on Kaifeng and Puyang in Henan Province and is current in north-eastern Henan, southern Hebei and south-western Shandong. In northern Henan it formed the two professional performing centres of Puyang and Huaxian, which carry on different mentou (lineage schools) and qupai systems respectively; since the 1990s, as entertainment programmes have grown ever more varied, the performance market for Daxian opera has continually contracted, and these two troupes have become the last living carriers of this ancient genre.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Daxian Opera · Daxian Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Whether in its plays, its music or its performance, Daxian opera has basically kept the look of its original ecology, and it conveys the lingering resonance of the Tang-dynasty canjunxi (army-entertaining play), the great Tang-Song suites and Song-Yuan zaju, so that it has very high value for historical research. Han Qingshan (per the official dossier of an associated inheritor): Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in 1942, native of Huaxian, Henan. He has served as head of the Huaxian Daxian Opera Troupe from 1980 to the present, and is the troupe's principal actor as well as its director; his vocal style is broad and rich, his enunciation correct and his singing rounded, and his representative works include Yan Haidou, Feng Shen Bang (The Investiture of the Gods), Shen Gao Ming (Trying the Edict), Hong Deng Ji (The Red Lantern) and The Red Detachment of Women. He is a representative inheritor of Daxian opera in the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects, and a national third-class director. Song Ziwu (per the official dossier of an associated inheritor): Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in September 1940, native of Caoxian County, Shandong Province. In 1954 he became a disciple of Yang Mingxue at the Daxian Opera Troupe of Heze, Shandong Province, where he studied the art of Daxian opera, specialising in the black-face and red-face roles and laosheng, and also taking on wusheng and chou. His vocal style blends the basic features of the Shandong, Puyang and Huaxian tunes and of Dalouxi; in line with his own conditions and the characteristics of the Daxian opera genre, he uses a variety of rhythmic forms to handle the qupai, so that melody and rhythm are concise while the vocal style is rich and varied. In singing he relies on the full voice as the mainstay with the secondary voice as support, enunciating the words before calling out the vocal line, and setting two vocal lines to one sentence. His basic training is solid, his performance delicate and accurate, and his dahong boxing stances orthodox. He is a representative inheritor of Daxian opera in the third batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects. He began teaching early: since taking up a post at the Daxian Opera School of Heze, Shandong, in 1962 he has trained more than two hundred students of all kinds.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Han Qingshan 02-0540
- Dai Jianping 02-0541
- Song Ziwu 03-1026
- Yao Jichun 04-1639
- Wang Xiulan 05-2352
- Song Feiyun
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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