opera Archives - understand-culture

Model Operas

On May 31, 1967, a People’s Daily editorial named eight “revolutionary model works,” geming yangbanxi, then playing in Beijing. Five were Peking operas, among them Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and The Red Lantern. Two were ballets, The Red Detachment of Women and The White-Haired Girl. One was the symphonic Shajiabang.

From 1969 to 1972, they were filmed for release across the country. More than 300 forms of local opera adapted them. Filming, recording and adaptation were all strictly required not to depart from the model. A saying went: “Eight hundred million people, eight shows.”

The All-Round Role

Peking opera had separate female role types, among them qingyi, huadan and daomadan. Wang Yaoqing (1881 to 1954) combined the strengths of all three in a new role type, the huashan, which gives equal weight to singing, speech, acting and combat.

The critic Xu Lingxiao praised Wang’s creation as “neither qingyi nor huadan, a school of its own.” Yu Ji in Farewell My Concubine is a huashan role.

The Empty Fort

In chapter 95 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Yi’s army reaches a town where Zhuge Liang sits on the tower and plays the qin. Sima Yi suspects an ambush and withdraws without a fight. The ruse is known as 空城计, the Empty Fort Stratagem. Peking opera stages it together with the loss of Jieting and the execution of Ma Su.

The story is not in the historical Records of the Three Kingdoms. Pei Songzhi, who wrote the commentary to that history, quoted an earlier account of it and judged that “all of it is doubtful” (实皆可疑).

Adapted Collectively

In 1967, the People’s Publishing House published the script of the Peking opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Its authors were given as the production crew of the Shanghai Peking Opera Company, which had “adapted it collectively.” The script of the Peking opera The Red Lantern carries a similar credit: “adapted collectively by the China Peking Opera Company.”

Beating Is Spurring On

In the old Peking opera training troupes, keban (科班), beatings were part of the training. The actor Tan Xiaozeng recalled that his grandfather described seven years in the troupe as seven years in prison. A beating was usually ten or twenty strokes, “until blood showed.” Yet he also said: “Our beatings were not corporal punishment. They were spurring on.” (我们的挨打不是体罚，是鞭策) “In this trade, without beating, no talent comes out.”

Not every school kept the practice. The director Jiao Juyin abolished corporal punishment at the Chinese opera school he led.

Ma Xiwu’s Method

From March 1943, Ma Xiwu headed the Longdong branch of the high court of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region. He went to the villages, investigated on the spot and held hearings there. Mediation, and combining mediation with judgment, was an important principle of his method. In a marriage case from Huachi County in 1943, Feng Peng’er stopped him on the road and made her complaint under a tree.

The case became a story. In 1944 the artist Gu Yuan published a woodcut, Comrade Ma Xiwu Mediates a Lawsuit. A 1945 play based on the case later became the opera Liu Qiao’er, filmed in 1956.

The Hidden Orchestra

In the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, the audience cannot see the orchestra. The pit is covered. It is called the mystischer Abgrund, the mystic abyss. Among opera houses, the hidden pit is unique to Bayreuth. The festival was first held in 1876.

The festival’s own magazine explains why. Richard Wagner wanted the Mühe der Tonerzeugung, the effort of producing the sound, to remain invisible. The musicians were not to be seen by the audience, and no light from the pit was to reach the auditorium. The listener should fall under the spell of the music ohne jegliche Ablenkung, without any distraction.

The Ceiling Went Up Five Meters

The renovation of the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin was planned to take three years and cost 239 million euros. It took seven years and cost about 400 million euros. At the request of music director Daniel Barenboim, the ceiling of the hall was raised by five meters. A new gallery under the ceiling raised the reverberation time from 1.1 to 1.6 seconds. The house reopened on 3 October 2017.

Barenboim said: Ich bin erstaunt, wie hervorragend der Klang geworden ist. I am amazed at how excellent the sound has become. He also said: Natürlich wäre es besser gewesen, wie geplant nach drei Jahren wieder zu öffnen. Of course it would have been better to reopen after three years, as planned.

The Trial Shot in Der Freischütz

Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz had its premiere in Berlin on 18 June 1821. The libretto is by Friedrich Kind. The young hunter Max wants to marry Agathe and become the successor of the hereditary forester, the Erbförster. For this he must pass a Probeschuss, a trial shot. If he misses, he cannot marry Agathe. At a shooting contest, Max does not hit the target a single time, and the onlookers mock him. He then agrees to meet the hunter Kaspar at midnight in the Wolf’s Glen to cast Freikugeln, magic bullets. At the end, a hermit speaks for Max. He argues for abolishing the trial shot. Instead, he proposes a Probejahr for Max, a probationary year, so that Max can find his way back to the path of virtue. The prince accepts his judgment.

Booed Staging, Cheered Singers

In July 2016 large parts of the audience at the Bayreuth Festival loudly booed Frank Castorf’s staging of Wagner’s Siegfried. On the same evening they cheered the singers frenetically. The conductor, Marek Janowski, received a Jubelsturm, a storm of cheers.