Chinese Opera is one of the “three oldest dramatic art forms in the world” , along with “Greece tragic-comedy and Indian Sanskrit” (China). From Chinese Opera comes many forms of opera, over 300 types , but the most well known is the Peking Opera (China). The Peking Opera is known by many names, like “Eastern Opera” (history), and “jingqiang” (Xu), but the most common name in the Western world is the “Beijing Opera” (Wertz).
Peking Opera is over 200 years old (Wertz).It started in approximately “1790, when four opera troupes from the province of Anhui came to Beijing to perform on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the emperor, Qianlong” (HISTORY; Xu). It was originally performed in “open air, teahouses or temple courtyards” (Wertz). Peking Opera is a blend of “singing, reading, acting, fighting, and dancing” (history). “Today as in the past century, performers are first trained in acrobatics, followed by singing and acting” (Wertz).
Peking Opera is said to be a live “encyclopedia of Chinese Culture” (Wertz). Because of this, and many other highly regarded qualities, China has made the Peking opera its “national opera” (Wertz). The Beijing Opera is such an important part of Chinese culture that “Beijing Opera Month” has been declared (Wertz).
Many of the classic operas from the Qing dynasty would, most likely, not be able to be performed by today’s actors. They consisted of “more than 24 acts; to rehearse them would take years and to stage them several days” (HISTORY). The epic play, Shengpingcaofa, was based on the tale, Journey to the West; is considered “one of the four great classic Chinese novels” (HISTORY). This play has over 240 acts (HISTORY).
There is a saying that Chinese actors use that helps us to understand the ...
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...seen that it will have a great fall in popularity among the people of China anytime soon.
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Xu, Chengbei. Peking Opera: The Performance behind the Painted Faces. Beijing: China
Intercontinental, 2010. Print.
young Chinese really trying to find their own ways, or just copying what looks to
Ever since the establishment of cinema in the early 1900s, Hollywood has continuously recreated elements of history to reenact for its future generations. In order to clearly broadcast a specific theme or message to relay to viewers around the world, Hollywood executives tend to embellish real life events, in order to provide a “fairytale” aspect to a seemingly not so “happily- ever-after” story from history. As part of this “fairytale” aspect, Hollywood tends to delegitimize as well as provide a more disrespectful and more comical version of societies and cultures in the specific time frame that the film is being set. Through the art of story telling, the movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, depict the two sides of Hollywood, the falsifying and mockery making of Chinese people, their society, beliefs and true events of history and that of an accurate portrayal.
Christmas and Opera did not merely seem to correlate, but understanding where the two events derived from can help one to understand the similarities and differences between them. The development of Christmas was different from the creation of opera because the working class was controlling the other social classes for profit. Whereas for opera, the different social classes unified to keep opera as entertainment and not a social event. Another difference came within the writing and context throughout the article and the presentation of information conveyed by the author. Yet the events share the similarity of both being refined and reinvented.
Wagner’s early years were filled with turbulence. Opera seemed an inevitability from the start with several of his older sisters becoming opera singers and his own life never lacked operatic drama. However his first all-consuming passion was not music but literature. Wagner was only 11 when he wrote a drama, influenced by Shakespeare and Greek drama, in which 42 characters died in the first four acts, and a lucky few reappeared as ghosts in the fifth act. Four years later Wagner decided to become a compo...
Hanan, Partick and Yu Li. Silent Operas. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990.
From the late 1800’s up through the present date, musical theater has changed. Though customs and love for the theater will always be carried on, origins, trends, and styles will change throughout time.
Lindo Jong provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best”(Tan 289).
All five of the archetypal shapes are in my self-portrait. First of all, the outside appearance is that of a square of rectangle. I feel that people who do not know me do not perceive any of the characteristics that the other shapes represent. Stability is the only characteristic represented by the shapes that people perceive of me. Inside my stable world is a circle in the middle of the bottom of the box. Within the circle is a triangle. This represents how spirituality is the center of my inner self and I find balance within my spirituality. Coming up from the center of the box is a spiral. As the spiral reaches its apex, there is an equidistant cross. This represents how I am constantly growing in order to reach a critical decision-making time of my life (what I want to do for the rest of my life).
Sit, Tony. "The Life of Empress Cixi” (from Issue 10 of the China in Focus Magazine). Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), 2001. .
German Romantic Opera. The Opera Quarterly , 4 (4), 61-74. Retrieved August 19, 2008 from Oxford Journals Online (http://oq.oxfordjournals.org).
Many cultural enthusiasts, archaeologists, and architects have a common interest in theatre and its origins. People from a few decades back have located the remaining of the oldest theatres in Greece, England, France and some parts of minor Asia. Theatre was a part of people’s lives as it was one of the few sources of entertainment, and it was originated from when people collectively sit in a gathering and listen to a storyteller. There were performances done by different people present at that moment. Later on, this activity kept improving and innovating, and in the result, many theaters for entertaining purposes were built by emperors who ruled the countries or kingdom in those days. The design of these theatres
"Drama and Theater in the Ancient World." Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World. Facts On File, 2007. Ancient and Medieval History Online. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. In the early ancient time people preformed without scripts or line. Bogucki states “The nature of these performances was often dictated by geography.” They were very spontaneous. Their performances occurred to celebrate victory in battle, births marriages, and also as well to mourn the dead, or fertility. When it comes to theater it was based off religious elements. The performance where made to honor or appease a God. In India the earliest performances where based off sacred texts. Dramatic presentations became common in Ancient India, Japan, and China. They often used makeup, mask, costumes, and other conventions. Most performances where done outside. The theaters resembled modern time. According to Bogucki “The development of theater as the word is understood in modern times began with the ancient Greeks and Roman.” A lot of the plays performed by the ancient Greeks where Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The Greeks distinguish tragedies and comedies with comic play. The Ancient Romans continued the Greeks tradition. The Romans as well performed the Greeks play, but produced their own
The History of Chinese Music The history and development of Chinese music through different time periods from when it began.
The origin of Chinese music can be track back to 7,000 to 8,000 years ago due to the discover of remains of instrument .In Xia Dynasty, in 2,000 B.C. , Chinese music began to be visible in recorded history. Back then, only the royal families and dignitary officials enjoyed music and the music was used for performing rituals since Chinese music was part of the Confucian tradition. In Confucianism, music is one of the six art(六藝), which includes calligraphy, etiquette , riding , archery, mathematics and music. During the Tang Dynasty(618-907), dancing and singing became the mainstream, which made music not a privilege to rich people anymore, it spread from the royal court to the common people. Also, with the influence from foreign religions such as Buddhism and Islam, their music were also absorbed into Chinese music. In Song Dynasty(960-1279), the original opera such as Zaju and Nanxi was formed and performed in tearooms, theaters, and showplaces. Chinese opera had been developed rapidly and diversely during Ming (1368-1644 ) and Qing Dynasties ( 1644-1911). The Chinese opera became very wide spread, different regions have developed their own opera style.
Chinese Opera is one of the “three oldest dramatic art forms in the world” (travelchinaguide), along with “Greece tragic-comedy and Indian Sanskrit” (travelchinaguide). From Chinese Opera comes many forms of opera, over 300 types (travelchinaguide), but the most well know would be the Peking Opera. The Peking Opera is known by many names, like “Eastern Opera” (ebeijing), and “jingqiang” (Xu), but the most common name in the Western world is the “Beijing Opera” (Wertz).