Suiyuan Library -- Chinese Opera Culture Studies

Author: Xie Boliang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-08
Features: Drama is a rare gem in the vast garden of human arts. Poetry expresses meaning through words, music speaks through melody, art conveys emotions with lines, sculpture conveys the spirit through form, and architecture expresses itself through space. These five arts are all created by humans but are relatively independent of the general population. As a comprehensive, complete, body-based, and audience-oriented art, dramatic art has undergone a process of coming together, separating, and then recombining. Initially, the early form of dramatic art was a crude synthesis. Among the three great classical dramas of the world, the Greek drama, which reached its peak of prosperity in the 5th century BC, had a large chorus and a limited number of actors, accompanied by crude costumes made of wine lees and flax cloth, and exaggerated, stylized dances. However, these primitive performance forms did not hinder their thunderous and overwhelming stage effects. Once the passionate tragedies were brought to life through vivid and immediate live performances, they were enough to stir the souls of millions of the audience. The author discusses the development of Chinese opera from a macro perspective, covering performance and creative theories, as well as from a micro perspective, providing a detailed description of the important literary forms in opera—prefaces and postfaces—as well as the various schools of Chinese opera.