Recently, Zhou Meihui, a young actress from the Beijing Peking Opera House, performed the famous Shangpai drama "Yutang Spring" for the audience in the capital at the Chang'an Grand Theatre. This performance is a few folds of "starting to solve", "triage", "supervisory committee" and "reunion". During the performance that night, "Yutang Chun rushed forward with sad tears", a sentence was just sung, and the applause and applause in the audience resounded, fully expressing the recognition and love of the audience for the shangpai rookie Zhou Meihui. "Yutang Spring" is a traditional classic play well known to the majority of opera fans, many genres have been staged, everyone often sees the performance books of Mei, Cheng, Xun, Zhang and other genres, and Su San of the Shang School is relatively rare. For this reason, Zhou Meihui, who is an excellent descendant of the Shang School, has performed well in plays such as "Han Mingfei", "Liang Hongyu" and "Qiankun Fushou Mirror" in recent years, and the vast number of fans and industry experts are also full of expectations for this play. This year coincides with the 120th anniversary of Mr. Shang Xiaoyun's birth, and the audience who like Shangpai art is very happy to see that Shangpai art can be inherited among the generation of young actors after the 90s.
Shangpai has a lot of plays are Yunwen Yunwu, and "Yutang Spring" is the first test of the actor's singing skills, Zhou Meihui has a good voice with ease of use and excellent talent, and she first convinced the fans in the singing voice and recitation, and the "muffled curtain call" before the appearance - "bitter wow" got full applause first, and after the appearance, there was "good meeting", which shows that the audience is full of confidence and expectations for Meihui. Under the careful teaching of two famous Shangpai masters Li Li and Shang Huimin, Zhou Meihui's singing skills and performance skills have made great progress, she has applied the characteristics of Shangpai singing supplemented by grace and rigidity and softness, and has a proper grasp of Shangpai's standing and falling tones in her voice, and when singing, she is high and round, contrasting, paying attention to momentum, and better inherits the characteristics and style of Shangpai's vocal cavity singing. In singing "I want to be in the courtyard like a brocade", "There is no death and no life in this go", "Even if You Die Huangquan is willing", you get thunderous applause from the audience. In the highly popular "Su San left Hongdong County" and "the prince is like a flower picking bee" singing, the rhythm is bright, in one go, giving people a sense of aural beauty, perfectly explaining the rich connotation of the Shangpai vocal cavity, singing in a staggered manner, rigid and soft, full of vitality, giving people the strong beauty of vertical and horizontal, pulling out dangers and attacking strong points, bringing great artistic enjoyment to the audience.
Some people say that this play is to listen to the singing, in fact, it is not, the early Beijing opera is to hold the belly and sing, into the opera garden called listening to the play instead of watching the play. Later, the senior actors who sang began to pay attention to the performance, paying attention to singing and making dance watches, hand-eye-body steps, deepening the plot, enhancing the ornamentation, and also making the characters in the play plump. Although Su San in "Yutang Spring" does not have an overly complicated body, her emotions are very complicated, which determines that she cannot completely rely on a good voice to win. This puts forward higher requirements for actors to shape and interpret characters, not only to be good at using the changes in the vocal cavity to show the character's personality and inner emotional changes, but also to impress the audience with meticulous performances, every move, every smile is in the play, all in the character. Zhou Meihui portrayed the character of Su San in three points, accurately in place, delicate and conveying the spirit. She grasped Su San's feelings of deep affection for Wang Jinlong and a trace of resentment, the deep hatred and hatred of Pi Shi for framing herself, the righteous indignation that corrupt officials had accepted bribes and wrongly sentenced her to prison, the gratitude for the righteous father's admiration for justice and the enlightenment and care for her, the extreme fear and doubt about the trial, and so on. Zhou Meihui uses the performance skills and characteristics of the Shang school, through the eyes, facial expressions and pointing to the clear body movements, such as the trembling of the hands and feet on the field, the rubbing of the legs after the kneeling posture, the performance of standing unsteadily, etc., showing the different emotional outpourings generated at different times, until Wang Jinlong expressed the cheerful steps when Su San tested the other party after exonerating himself, he could see some of Su San's relief, and when he reached the happy shape of the cave room, the audience hung their hearts and fell to the ground. In fact, the fans already know that this is the result, but they still need the actors to bring them into the play through in-depth performance, which is the charm of watching the play and listening to the play, and it is also a great test of the actor's performance skills. If the play is warm or watery, it becomes a formality, and the fans will not buy it, and there will be no value for appreciation.
As a post-90s Shangpai rookie, Zhou Meihui has not studied Shangpai for a long time, but she has unique features in using genre performance and vocal cavity art characteristics to portray characters. Compared with the singing and dancing of "Zhaojun Out of the Plug", playing Su San and Wang Zhaojun is not all the way, but has its own focus. In a way, the play "Yutang Spring" is more difficult in terms of performance difficulty and pleasing the audience, not to mention that there are wonderful interpretations of various genres and famous artists, and there is still pressure to perform Shangpai's "Yutang Spring". The good news is that Zhou Meihui has withstood the test and has been unanimously recognized and praised by industry experts and the majority of theater fans.
Plum blossom fragrance comes from the bitter cold, and fans who are familiar with Zhou Meihui know that Meihui is a very hard-working and studious young man. As long as there is no performance task, the longest time in the rehearsal hall of the theater is Meihui, rehearsing over and over again, silently playing again and again, and a little accumulation has achieved the shangpai xinrui that blooms brilliantly on the current stage. For young actors, it is not possible to prematurely evaluate how high her artistic level has reached or how high her artistic achievements have been, but as a young person, she can immerse herself in art, act according to rules, and have the spirit of perseverance on the artistic road, which is the most difficult and valuable, and it is also the most worthy of respect. Just a few days before the performance, her mentor, Teacher Li Li, rushed from Tianjin to Beijing to play for Meihui between her daily performances, and despite her advanced age, she knelt on the ground and repeatedly demonstrated and sang, and strived to achieve the best artistic effect.
The art of Peking Opera has been passed down from generation to generation by oral tradition. Inheriting and promoting the art of opera and inheriting the fanghua of the guangda tradition is to act more and act well, and only by inheriting the rules and regulations can there be a development of thick accumulation and thin hair. Zhou Meihui's Shangpai art road is still just beginning the journey, both a long way to go, but also full of challenges, I hope that Meihui will live up to the expectations of her mentor and many theater fans and audiences, open the art world belonging to their generation as soon as possible, emit the fragrance of Shangpai art, and make new contributions to the development of Shangpai art and inherit the opera culture! (Photo: 杳伶)