The Paper's reporter Pan Yu
Tang Xianzu wrote in the "Peony Pavilion", "Du Liniang's 28th Spring Rong", du Liniang, the daughter of the 16-year-old Taishou, was young and mysterious, because of a spring "garden tour", and Liu Mengmei "dreamed" to meet, since then "I don't know what to do, I have always been deep." The living can die, and the dead can live." This love story of life and death has also become a classic of Chinese opera and Kunqu opera art.
The actors of the campus version of "Peony Pavilion" are all students majoring in Kunqu opera performance in the class of 2016, all of whom are 16-18 years old, and the characters in the play are the right age.
On October 24, the Kunqu opera descendants who were full of "28 years old" took to the stage of the Shanghai Daning Theater. Suzhou Art School (Suzhou Kunqu School) with their campus version of "Peony Pavilion" opened the first stop of the national tour in Shanghai. The actors in this performance are all students majoring in Kunqu opera performance in the 2016 class of the school, all of whom are 16-18 years old, and the characters in the play are the right age. This version of "Peony Pavilion" is therefore particularly youthful and compelling. The actors used the Kunqu opera art they had studied for many years to show the unique beauty and youth of the play "Peony Pavilion", which greatly amazed the audience.
This performance also attracted the attention of many opera seniors and experts in Shanghai. Cai Zhengren, Yue Meiti, Liang Guyin, Zhang Mingrong and other Kunqu opera artists all came to the scene to watch the opera. The 2016 Kunqu opera performance class that starred in the campus version of "Peony Pavilion" is another six-year Kunqu major recruited by Suzhou Art School since the 2006 class.
Wang Zhen, principal of Suzhou Art School, said that as the only art secondary vocational school in Suzhou that trains Kunqu professionals, the school's Kunqu major has nearly 400 graduates in 15 classes, including Yu Jiulin, Shen Fengying, Zhou Xuefeng, Gu Weiying and other four plum blossom award winners. This performance is the first tour of the Kunqu opera major in the 62 years since its founding.
17-year-old Du Liniang played by Cheng Jiayu and Chunxiang played by Qian Sihao, 18-year-old Liu Mengmei played by Wang Hao... During the performance, 21 students from the class appeared one after another. Although they are still in school, after several years of study, their performances on stage have won the unanimous praise of the artists of their predecessors, and they not only have a look at the stage, but also have a certain maturity in singing and acting. The audience said that the young and beautiful actors on the stage felt very good.
"The students in this class are well-organized and the overall level is very good. The stage is the place where the teaching and training of actors can be most tested. Therefore, we decided to tour "Peony Pavilion" and spend a year polishing to improve the level of student performance. Wang Zhen said that the tour also got Cai Zhengren, Liang Guyin, Wang Fang and other famous teachers to "open a small stove".
That night, the students performed classic folds such as "Haunted Study", "Dream in the Garden", "Dream Hunting", and "Leaving the Soul" in the "Peony Pavilion". And their brother- and sister- Zhou Xuefeng, vice president of Suzhou Kun Theater in Jiangsu Province, who won the "Plum Blossom Award", made a performance with a fold of "Picking Up Paintings and Calling Paintings" to help the performance.
"In recent years, in addition to the 10-year kunqu six-year students, we have recruited students almost every year in the five-year higher vocational Kunqu opera class." Wang Zhen revealed that in recent years, more and more students are willing to apply for and study Kunqu opera majors, and the employment of Kunqu opera students is also getting wider and wider, in addition to entering the professional Kunqu opera troupe as an actor, many cultural units and enterprises hope that there are professional Kunqu opera talents to engage in related work. The school's school philosophy of "promoting teaching with acting and integrating acting and teaching" that has gradually formed over the years also hopes to cultivate more talents and inheritors for Kunqu opera art.
Many Kunqu opera artists and experts came to the scene to watch the opera.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Yan Zhang