Daxian Opera
01 · Historical Records
Drawing on the Shandong volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu, Daxian opera toured as troupes through south-western Shandong and eastern Henan from the mid-Qing to the Republican period, staging at temple fairs and markets; after the 1950s professional troupes were formed in Heze and elsewhere, and since the 1980s artists such as Wang Xiulan have kept performing and trained young actors.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Daxian opera, also called “Daxianzi opera”, is found mainly in south-western Shandong, eastern Henan and southern Hebei and has a history of more than five hundred years. It belongs to the xiansuo vocal system and was formed on the basis of Yuan-Ming popular tunes and xiaoling blended with various folk tunes. It is highly distinctive in musical structure and performing style: it once had more than three hundred qupai, of which more than two hundred survive, rigorously and standardly structured, rich and varied in mode, plaintive in tune and complete in its interludes. Its performance conventions are rich and stress skill, its movements rough and pungent with exaggerated postures. It has more than three hundred traditional pieces, mostly drawn from history and folk legend, among which Shiyu Dianjiang and Bao Gong Sifang Huazhou are rare pieces.
Shiyu Dianjiang (Shiyu Musters the Generals)
A rare traditional piece among Daxian opera's more than three hundred plays.
Bao Gong Sifang Huazhou (Judge Bao Visits Huazhou in Disguise)
A rare traditional piece among Daxian opera's more than three hundred plays.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Its martial-play stances absorb the body methods of the Dahong boxing and often use real weapons; its civil plays are fine and elegant, showing a clear local character. Its qupai bear the same names as Yuan-Ming popular tunes such as Shanpo Yang and Suo Nan Zhi and are closely related in musical structure to Yuan sanqu; the Heze line preserves the largest repertory, while the eastern-Henan line is noted for serial plays on historical subjects.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Daxian Opera · Daxian Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In the study of northern operatic music and Yuan sanqu since the Yuan and Ming these qupai are of important reference value; with more than three hundred traditional pieces and more than two hundred qupai, Daxian opera provides important material for the study of Yuan-Ming northern operatic music and Yuan sanqu, and the Heze Local Opera Transmission and Research Institute sustains the genre through troupe performance and talent training. Wang Xiulan (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Han, born in March 1941 in Heze, Shandong. In 1972 she transferred to the Shandong Liuzi Opera Troupe and in 1975 to the Heze theatre as deputy manager. She has created nearly a hundred characters of different temperaments on stage, her representative works including such traditional plays as Liang Jia Shan, Huo Long Zhen, Shen Gaoming and Fan Wu Guan and such modern plays as Sister Jiang and The Red Detachment of Women, with influence across Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other provinces. She has taken several disciples, and all three leading dan actors of the Heze Daxian opera troupe come from her school. She is a representative inheritor of Daxian opera in the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects.
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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