【Editor's Note】Jin Caifeng, a Yue opera performance artist and founder of Yue opera Jinpai Art, died at the age of 92 at 10:45 a.m. on January 10, 2022 at the Central Hospital of Xuhui District, Shanghai.
In his artistic career of more than 60 years, Jin Caifeng has created many classic plays and classic images such as "Panfu Sofu", "Jasper Hairpin", "Cailou Ji", "Empress Hanwen" and so on. Because he is good at acting in Tsing Yi Flower Shirt and hua Dan, Jin Caifeng has always had a great personality on the Yue opera stage. On the basis of inheriting the Yuan Xuefen school, the Art of the Golden School, which she founded, absorbed the essence of Shi Yinhua, Fan Ruijuan, Fu Quanxiang and other schools, and became its own style, which was called "Yuan Cavity Golden Singing" by musicians.
In the Yue opera world, Yue opera performance artist Jin Caifeng and her husband Huang Sha director have always been a good story in the Yue world. Jin Caifeng is considered to be a Yue opera artist trained in New China. As a gold-medal director in the Shanghai Yue opera industry, Huang Sha has successively directed nearly 40 classic works of Yue opera, such as "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "Xi Xiang Ji" and "Pan Fu Sofu", leaving precious experience and valuable contributions to the development of Yue opera from the simple form of one table and two chairs to the comprehensive artistic development of choreography, directing, music and beauty.
In May 2009, Jin Caifeng held a series of performance and directing art activities in the name of her and her late husband Huang Sha, which was also the first time in the Yue opera industry to concentrate the performance and directing arts for performance and discussion.
This article was published in the Oriental Morning Post before the 2009 Jin Caifeng "Yue Opera Gold" series of activities, jin Caifeng talked about the idea of the comprehensive artistic development of Yue opera, and repeatedly emphasized: "Yue opera is impossible without a screenwriter and director. "This article is now reissued in commemoration.
In the movie "Jade Hairpin", Jin Caifeng played Li Xiuying.
One is a rising star of Yue opera who came out of a small household in Ningbo, Zhejiang, and the other is a poor sour talent who graduated from the Department of Political Economy of St. John's University. In the 1950s, Jin Caifeng and Huangsha, two young people who were passionate about drama, came together because of art, and began a happy and bumpy life. At that time, the pair of talents and beauties in the eyes of others not only changed their respective destinies, but also affected the development of Yue opera art.
For more than 30 years, art and life have accompanied each other day and night, making the art of Jin Caifeng and Huangsha almost indistinguishable from you and me.
The biggest influence that Huangsha brought to Jin Caifeng's art was the "old drama must be newly performed" that he has been striving to pursue in his directing career.
Just next week (May 27-31, 2009), a special performance director art session and series of events called "Yue Opera Gold" will be launched. Within a whole week, Jin Caifeng, as the founder of the Golden School of Yue Opera, will personally take the stage to lead his own performance, and Huang Sha's directing art special and the two's masterpiece "Panfusov" will also be reinterpreted in the form of a star version. Shortly before the event began, Jin Caifeng also collected the two men's life stories and artistic pursuits into a book, and the new book called "Yue Opera Gold: My Life with Huangsha" will also be signed and sold at Book City next Saturday.
Today, more than half a century later, Jin Caifeng is already the founder of a generation of Yue opera genres, and the late Huangsha has also become a great director with rich works in the history of Yue opera.
Although Huangsha has been dead for a full 20 years, when it comes to her husband, the 79-year-old Jin Cai still has a deep sense of style. When it comes to emotional places, I can't help but look dejected. Whether emotionally or artistically, this pair of "Yue Opera Gold" has always harbored the most rare loyalty today.
"Yue Opera Gold: I Live with Huang Sha"
Traditional actresses meet new college students
Among all the older generation of Yue opera performance artists, Jin Caifeng has taken the most distinctive artistic path. She is not from the third examination of the science class, nor has she entered the drama school for special training. She is the only actress who has grown from a pure Lover of Yue Opera to a generation of Yue Opera masters.
Because he followed his grandmother to see plays since he was a child, Jin Caifeng fell in love with Yue opera at a very young age. Like all the fans of that era, Jin Caifeng would sneak into the theater alone, return home to use the big bed as a stage, be single-generation water sleeves, and often learn to sing and act. At the age of fifteen, she was finally admitted to the Yue opera training class of the Xuesheng Theater Troupe as she wished, with a sincere heart to learn the art of the teacher, although the only reward was to eat a "meal in the hall" between the day and night, the future may be just to run the dragon set, but Jin Caifeng did not give up like many classmates, the earliest singing of xiaosheng she gradually emerged because she often sang on the radio "top singing", and then entered the Dongshan Yue Art Society to re-perform Danjiao, with Lu Ruiying, Ding Saijun, and known as the "Three Dingjia" of Dongshan. In 1951, like all the young actors who pursued progress in that era, Jin Caifeng joined the Yue Opera Troupe of the East China Opera Research Institute. It was also at that time that she met the most important person in her life, Huangsha.
Huang Sha entered the troupe earlier than Jin Caifeng, and compared to Jin Caifeng, an inconspicuous little actor, Huang Sha was already a well-known director at that time. In the eyes of everyone, it is a typical "gentleman-type handsome man" of that era, Huang Sha, who graduated from the Department of Political Science and Economics of St. John's University in Shanghai, has always given the impression of humanity and courtesy, a straight long shirt wearing trousers, going out in the rain is wearing a raincoat and an umbrella, the feet are leather shoes jacket rain boots, and the socks are always white. As a high-achieving university student, Huang Sha worked as a "shore port clerk" at Shanghai Customs, a cashier in a restaurant, a salesman in a commercial firm, and a clerk in the Shanghai Material Supply Bureau of the Kuomintang... However, all kinds of decent work have not made Huangsha feel solid. It wasn't until this "literary young man", who had been organizing amateur drama troupe performances during college, was finally invited into the Yue Opera Troupe by Yuan Xuefen that he finally found that he had found a career that he could pursue for life.
"We started to have feelings when we first collaborated on the traditional little play 'Lu Hua Ji', when I was going to play a vicious stepmother, but I didn't feel it at all, and he gave me a lot of advice. At that time, I thought that this director was very smart, had ideas, was very decent and down-to-earth, and was quite handsome, so I had a good feeling for him at that time. Recalling the past, Jin Caifeng still has a brilliant face, "At that time, we naturally came together, and more and more we felt that no one could be separated from anyone." ”
It wasn't until he had to get his marriage license that Jin Caifeng knew that Huangsha was a full 10 years older than himself. "In fact, I learned later that Huangsha's family situation is very poor, and the reason why he can go to the aristocratic school is also because his relatives receive help, he sleeps in the stove, and he does not dare to eat more, and he sends people under the fence without compromise."
Yellow sand (left) and gold mining wind
Yue opera cannot do without a screenwriter and director
More than thirty years have passed, but the disparity in educational background has not affected the feelings of the two, Jin Caifeng and Huangsha have always been in harmony with each other, and almost never have a red face. Even with the great winds and waves of the Cultural Revolution, the two spent time together. Jin Caifeng said: "The two of us abide by one principle when we get along after marriage: I respect him, and he respects me. We are husband and wife, but also close friends in art. Between us, we talk very little about the problems of life, but more about the problems of art. ”
"If I come across a play where he is the director and the main actor is me, then the conversation is even more endless." Talking in the bedroom, talking in the bathroom, eating supper and still talking, often talking about not sleeping at one or two o'clock in the morning. Jin Caifeng said,
For more than thirty years, art and life have accompanied each other day and night, making the art of Jin Caifeng and Huangsha almost inseparable from you and me.
Huang Sha directed more than 40 large and small plays in his lifetime, such as "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai" and "Chasing Fish", which have not only become the reserved plays of Shanghai Yue Theatre, but also some have been filmed and screened. Jin Caifeng's representative works "Panfu Sofu", "CaiLou Ji", "Jasper Hairpin", etc. are almost all directed by Huangsha, and some plays such as "Yang Guifei" are even written by Huangsha himself.
Speaking of this, Jin Caifeng was very emotional, "In fact, we pour the love in our hearts into art. If the works I perform are successful, there will always be half of his hard work, he has me, I have him, water and milk blend, it is difficult to distinguish between each other. ”
Jin Caifeng said that Huang Sha has always been excellent for art, and he is very serious and strict when rehearsing plays, he not only has a general idea of the whole play performed, but even the actions of each character are not spared, even minor roles.
The biggest influence that Huangsha brought to Jin Caifeng's art was the "old drama must be newly performed" that he has been striving to pursue in his directing career. "It is that while the traditional old drama is constantly performed, it must be continuously improved and enriched in order to enrich the characters." Even an action, an improvement in status, is changing. Only when the old drama is new can it have vitality. From a table and two chairs to a set, costume improvement, etc., as long as it does not harm tradition, the audience will be satisfied. ”
Under this artistic pursuit, Jin Caifeng respects tradition and does not conform to the rules in art, and her masterpieces "Panfusov" and "Jade Hairpin" are precisely the repertoire that she has repeatedly pondered, refined, processed, and constantly enriched in her performances. And Jin Caifeng himself was also known as "Living Lan Zhen" and "Shen Xiuying" because he created two successful models in the play.
Compared with the diligent pursuit of art by their generation, Jin Caifeng expressed his concern about the sloppy attitude of young people in the Yue opera industry to art now: "I sometimes go to see them rehearse, and everyone does not enter the mood of the characters, let alone sing out the performance, just walk the position again, not to mention that we were like that in the past, is this also called rehearsal?" ”
In the face of the current situation of the survival of Yue opera, Jin Caifeng said that he often had such an idea: "In the process of Yue opera from the initial 'Du Ban' to the development of large-scale stage dramas, Huang Sha and some of his contemporaries who have dabbled in new literature and art have devoted themselves to becoming screenwriters and directors, what is the most critical role? I think that after thoroughly understanding the characteristics of the opera tradition, we can selectively integrate the performance methods such as drama and film according to local conditions, not hard penetration, not imposed, and still less to turn Yue opera into a drama with added singing. ”
Jin Caifeng said with this long sigh: "But we now have neither a good book nor a good director, and Yue opera cannot do without a screenwriter and director." ”
"I'm still quite sad, there are too many temptations for young actors. How many young actors are willing to do the end for Yue opera, and how many people are practicing? How many people are working on it? Jin Caifeng finally said, "I think that people who are engaged in art work must concentrate on consistency." I was practicing once, I practiced a hundred times, only if I like my obsession, can I do a good job in art, actors, is to have 'stupidity'. ”
Jin Caifeng and students