Si Opera
01 · Historical Records
Sizhou opera is one of the four major opera genres of Anhui Province. It was originally called la hun qiang (the “soul-pulling tune”) and spread along both banks of the Huai River in Anhui, and it has a history of more than two hundred years. Only around 1920 did Sizhou opera acquire permanent troupes and regular performances, and only then did it begin to enter the cities.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Sizhou opera, like Shandong's Liqin opera and Jiangsu's Huaihai opera, developed out of the same la hun qiang, so a certain blood relationship exists among the three. Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton. The vocal style of Sizhou opera is highly improvisational: performers may take such liberties as their own voice allows, and hence the name “yixin diao” (the heart-pleasing tune). The male voice is rough, bold and unrestrained, high-pitched and clear-carrying; the female voice is winding and lingering, and most endings leap up an octave into a drawn-out melisma — bright, pungent, and moving to the soul. Its accompanying instruments centre on the tu pipa, a rustic plucked lute, supported by the sanxian, sheng, erhu, gaohu, dizi and the like, together with four main pieces of percussion: the ban drum, the large gong, the nao cymbals and the small gong. The role types of Sizhou opera are divided mainly into large sheng, laosheng, second dan, small dan and chou. Its performance, built on narrative singing, absorbs a large measure of folk dance forms such as the yiahuachang stepping dance, the small-cart dance, the dry-boat dance, the lantern dance and the running-donkey dance; it is little constrained by operatic convention and is marked by a bright and lively, plain and frank, vigorous and pungent manner, full of the rustic flavour of northern Anhui. In performance there are many distinctive movements and steps, such as sitaijiao (four-platform stance), xuanfengshi (whirlwind), jianzigu (scissor legs), xianhezou (immortal crane walk), baimadaguan (a hundred horses in battle), choulianghuanzhu (drawing the beam and swapping the post), yanziboni (swallow flicking the mud), huaizhongbaoyue (embracing the moon in the bosom) and fenghuangshuangzhanchi (phoenix spreading both wings); performers must pay attention to the coordination and interplay of hands, eyes, waist, legs and steps.
Three Coils over the Cold Bridge
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
The Great Garden
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
The Story of the Silk Shoes
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
The Story of the Velvet Flower
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
Running to the Kiln
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
Picking Cotton
Sizhou opera has more than eighty full-length traditional plays and more than sixty small plays and excerpt plays. Representative repertoire includes Three Coils over the Cold Bridge, Eighth Sister Yang Rescues Her Brother, Fan Lihua Reviews the Troops, Pi Xiuying Makes Four Appeals, The Great Garden, The Story of the Silk Shoes, The Story of the Velvet Flower, Running to the Kiln and Picking Cotton.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Accounts of the origins of Sizhou opera differ. Many hold that it arose in the Haizhou area of northern Jiangsu, where local farmers originally improvised small plays to folk tunes such as the hunter tunes (liehuqiang) and Taiping songs; it was later carried into Sizhou, where it absorbed the local folk singing art and became the Anhui la hun qiang Sizhou opera. Sizhou opera is closely bound to the life and customs of the people of northern Anhui, and it shows strong local cultural characteristics.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Si Opera · Si Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In recent years, with the leap-forward development of society, audiences have gradually dwindled, performances run at a loss, traditional skills are on the verge of being lost, and the survival of Sizhou opera has entered a crisis, so it urgently needs support from government and society. Li Baoqin (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): a woman of the Han ethnicity, born in 1933 in Sihong County, Jiangsu Province. On the basis of inheriting the traditional performance and tune patterns of Sizhou opera, she formed an artistic style with exquisite lyrics and fine, subtle acting. Her representative works include The Little Son-in-Law and Picking Cotton. She is a representative inheritor of Sizhou opera in the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects and a first-class performer. Lu Shibin (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): a man of the Han ethnicity, born in 1938 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. Over several decades he has starred in a large number of traditional and modern plays, and he has also spent many years exploring and researching the vocal styles of Sizhou opera. His representative works include The Little Son-in-Law and Fifteen Strings of Cash. He is a representative inheritor of Sizhou opera in the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chen Ruomei 02-0588
- Li Baoqin 02-0589
- Lushibin 02-0590
- Li Hongxiang 05-2373
- Tao Wanxia 05-2374
- Zhou Bin 05-2375
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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