Lantern Opera
01 · Historical Records
The mid-Qing was the heyday of Liangshan lantern opera. It was very active in the Qing; the Cangxi County Gazetteer of the forty-seventh year of Qianlong (1782) records that “at the Lantern Festival, flower lanterns are lit and lantern opera performed, stages erected in the city and its suburbs for competitive performance, day and night without distinction”. After the founding of the People's Republic, under the support of the Party and government, in the 1960s and 1980s the Nanchong prefecture several times organised people to investigate and collect the lantern opera scattered among the people, excavating more than three hundred scripts and more than ninety qupai. Drawing on local opera annals, it entered its heyday in the mid-Qing and Qing records document its performance; in the 1960s and 1980s surveys excavated more than three hundred scripts and ninety qupai.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Lantern opera is not only a folk short opera with strong local character in Chongqing and Sichuan but also one of the important vocal styles of Chuanju. Because its performance is bound up with such folk activities as the Spring Festival, the Lantern Festival, shehuo and celebrations of the altar, it is marked by many short plays, many comedies and many boisterous plays, generally not performing those with large scenes, complex plots and many characters. Liangshan lantern opera derives from the folk “playing with lanterns” and yangge opera, combining the dance movements of the former with the narrative-singing forms of the latter. Nanchong is its birthplace. Nanchong city lies in the north-eastern Sichuan basin on the middle reaches of the Jialing river, and the genre is popular in Langzhong, Cangxi, Nanbu, Yanting, Jiange, Zhaohua, Jiangyou, Xichong, Yilong, Bazhong and Guang'an, and in parts of Mianyang, Suining and Dazhou. It is one of the traditional folk art forms of northern Sichuan with the longest history, the widest coverage, the greatest influence and the deepest popular base. The Langzhong County Gazetteer of the Jiajing reign of the Ming (1522–1566) records that “on the fifteenth day of the fifth month, at the plague-god festival, lantern opera is performed for ten days, incense burned nightly like mist, the firelight unceasing, and the lantern mountain made as at the Lantern Festival”. It has many times taken part in national or provincial festivals and competitions and won various awards from the Ministry of Culture. It foregrounds lantern art, its plays mostly short, comic and boisterous, its singing made up of lantern tunes, ditties and some gaoqiang, its language humorous and its movements exaggerated, close to the farmers' life and moral standards.
Nao Huang Hui (The Boisterous City-God Fair)
One of the representative plays of northern Sichuan lantern opera and a signature work of the inheritor Peng Juan.
Zheng Banqiao Mai Gang (Zheng Banqiao Buys a Vat)
One of the representative plays of northern Sichuan lantern opera and a signature work of the inheritor Wang Yang.
Banbian Yue'er Ming (Half a Bright Moon)
One of the representative plays of northern Sichuan lantern opera and a signature work of Wang Yang.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Before Liberation Liangping county was also called Liangshan county, so the local opera was called Liangshan lantern opera, a name still used today. Now local people also call it “baotou opera” (before Liberation female roles were played by men, commonly called “baotou”), “duangong opera” or “pangtongtong tune”. Northern Sichuan lantern opera portrays the beauty and ugliness, good and evil, joys and sorrows of the world by the farmers' moral standards, mostly expressing the thoughts, feelings and moral sentiments of working people, in plain and easily understood, humorous language with a strong rustic and local character.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Lantern Opera · Lantern Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Peng Juan (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): after leaving senior middle school in 1950 Peng Juan long served in the Nanchong city Chuanju troupe as instrumentalist, composer and band conductor; from the 1960s he collected large amounts of northern Sichuan lantern opera music in the region, studying it long and composing for more than thirty lantern opera plays. His compositions have a distinctive northern Sichuan flavour, novel and original, with strongly melodic singing. His representative works include Nao Huang Hui. Male, Han, born in 1933, died in 2008, a native of Nanchong, Sichuan; a representative inheritor of lantern opera (northern Sichuan lantern opera) in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects and a national first-grade composer. Wang Yang (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): male, Han, born in 1937 in Chuanshan, Sichuan. His performance is distinctive, especially his chou role, able to portray emperors and ministers, great officials, foreign-concession villains and street ruffians, with superb skill and vivid, rich language. His representative works include Zheng Banqiao Mai Gang and Banbian Yue'er Ming. He is a representative inheritor of lantern opera (northern Sichuan lantern opera) in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects and a first-grade actor. Northern Sichuan lantern opera is one of the important sources of the Chuanju lantern-tune vocal style, and its lantern-festival performance tradition and the farmers' aesthetic taste provide rich material for studying Sichuan folk opera and folklore; the Nanchong Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Centre sustains the genre through reviving plays and training talent.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chen Dehui 02-0617
- Que Taichun 02-0618
- Peng Juan 02-0619
- Wang Yang 02-0620
- Meng Yongxiang 03-1070
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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