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The Province of
Sichuan and its Famous Music Theater
From
the abundance of more than 300 still-vital local theater traditions
(Difangxi) in China, this time we've selected the most significant
and most interesting form from southwestern China, the Sichuan Opera,
which is particularly characterized by its unique solo singing, refined
acting, rich percussion and irresistibly funny comedians, all of which
are very likely unparalleled throughout the world. |
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Sichuan, a gigantic sandstone basin ringed, like the Tibetan highlands, by high mountains, is China's most populous province and the homeland of more than 100 million people. Its name (si = four and chuan = river or rivers) refers to the four most important rivers which flow through the province and which ultimately conjoin within Sichuan to form the great Yangtze River. The principal agricultural products cultivated in Sichuan's extraordinarily fertile soil include rice, tea and mulberry trees, whose leaves are used in the |
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traditional industry of raising silkworms. Rustic songs originally sung by boatsmen, tea-plantation and rice-paddy workers developed into the first sung plays, which, in a sense, can be regarded as the precursors of the province's great opera tradition, the chuanju ("rivers theater"), a name which has been translated into Western languages as the "Sichuan Opera." The special characteristic of this music-theater, and one which distinguishes it from other theatrical traditions in which this feature is less strongly emphasized, is the immense vitality and dynamism of the performances, which always strive to bring the individual's artistic abilities into play and thereby ensure that the highly differentiated and laboriously learned forms never ossify into the mere repetition of preexisting material. In part because of this theatrical form's intimate connection to a still lively treasury of folk songs, the Sichuan Opera reveals an extraordinary flexibility and vitality of expression in its music and movements. Occupying
the unrivaled first place among more than a dozen other traditions
of music-theater in the province, the Sichuan Opera is distinguished
by a melodically fluent fundamental character and numbers among the
southern Chinese styles which clearly differ from the northern Chinese
operas with their tendency toward loud and frequently martial passages.
Numerous Sichuan opera troupes are active throughout the province,
both in the countryside and in the cities, but only the troupes from
the capital city of Chengdu and from the province's other major metropolis
of Chongqing maintain a consistently first-rate artistic level. The
youthful ensemble of the Civic Theater Academy of Chengdu was selected
for the cultural exchange project with Germany because its members
impressively combine virtuosic stage performances with excellent didactic
competence.
You
can find more information about the ensemble
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Sichuan Opera 2001
