This is the general name for all the local flower-drum operas and lantern operas in Hunan province. They are divided into Changsha Flowerdrum Opera, Hengyang Flower-drum Opera, Shaoyang Flower-drum Opera, and others, which have different styles.
The Hunan Flowerdrum Opera developed from Hunan folk songs, and from one female role and a clown role to three singing roles. There are about 400 plays in the flower-drum repertoire, and over 300 tunes. These plays can be divided, according to their structure and musical style, into Sichuan Tune, Daluo Tune, Paizi and Xiaodiao.
They all feature straightforward melodies and rich folk flavor. The famous actors include Liao Chunshan, Wang Yousheng and Zhang Shushen.
The Hunan Flower Drum Opera, indeed, offers a folk style with little or no pretense to depth or subtlety of emotion. It is a dramatic medium developed in the villages of Hunan Province three centuries ago, and in Saturday's performances there were few gray areas between good and evil or high spirits and low ones. The plot is filled with magic and metamorphosis, and dark forces are defeated at the end. Yet within this folksy format reside some sly wit and subtle slapstick. Sexual roles are nicely reversed as well. It is the women who woo, pursue and propose, and the men who flee from them in confusion.
The players represent nine fairy sisters, two humans - the woodcutter and his mother - and a villain in the form of a golden toad. Also to be enjoyed are a nice flying serpent, an acrobatic fight scene, some lovely costumes and sets, impressively thundering storm effects and a small corps of toads leaping entertainingly around the stage.
Some of the action is spoken, some sung. The vocal music, which keeps within very narrow melodic and metric limits, unfolds in stanzas, with instrumental ritornellos played between them, and with the singer adding and altering embellishments with each repetition. The women sing with a tight narrow nasal shrillness that is piercing yet fascinating. The male timbres are somewhat nearer to Western techniques. A small band of plucked and bowed strings and percussion accompanies the action from the wings just offstage, and much of the opera's good humor radiates from the musicians.
The gestures contain hints of stylized abstraction but are always directly understandable to audiences unfamiliar with the tradition. The woodcutter at work chopping and gathering had a lovely economy of movement to it, and a subsequent episode with a magical, invisible lover was full of grace and wit. One admired, in other words, the Hunan Flower Drum Opera's symmetry of sound and movement, but it was their simplicity of spirit that really drew us close to them.
| A Brief Introduction To Huagu Opera |
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Huagu Opera is a now famous local opera of Central China's Hunan Province with a history of more than 200 years, and with a complete set of roles, various arias and very strong expressive power.
The opera has developed from simple folk song and dance to an influential local opera capable of play interpretations. Huagu Opera's basic arias, which accompanies simple play plots, are based on the tunes of the local folk songs sung in the mountains and fields. But due to more intricate plots and the need to express the complicated feelings and thoughts of characters in plays, these basic arias have developed into different qupai (the names of tunes to which qu are composed) with different rhythms.
The early Huagu Opera troupes were mainly composed of semi-professional members engaged in seasonal performances. In the busy farming season, they farmed, while in the slack season they performed. In the past the Huagu Opera was discriminated against and prohibited by feudal governors. This led to Huagu Opera troupes throughout the province also performing other major prevailing local opera as a shield for performing Huagu Opera.
There are over 400 Huagu Opera's traditional plays. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Huagu Opera has greatly thrived. Traditional plays like Killing a Bird have been collected and re-performed, while modern plays like Sanliwan have been created. Also, a number of repertoires like "Beating the Bronze Gong" and "Repairing the Pan" have been made into films.
In the terms of genres, the art form has different genres like Changsha Huagu Opera, Hengyang Huagu Opera and Shaoyang Huagu Opera, with Changsha Huagu Opera being the most influential. |
