The Paper's reporter Liao Yang
The wine is fragrant and the song is flying
Friend, please have a drink
Please have a drink
The triumphant October will never be forgotten
The cup was sprinkled with tears of happiness
Come and come and come
Spring thunder rings in October
Eight hundred million Shenzhou raised the Golden Cup
The wine is thick and beautiful
A thousand cups are not drunk
……
At the Spring Festival Gala of CCTV in 1979, a hearty "Toast Song" sang people's long-suppressed passion and became a musical coordinate at a turning point of the times. The singer of this song is Li Guangxi, who is known as the "evergreen tree of the song world".
On March 13, singer Lee Kwang Hee died at the age of 93. From "Drinking Song" to "Toast Song", from famous works to masterpieces, those golden songs that became famous through his singing have been salvaged out, awakening the collective memories of many people.
Li Guangxi Visual China Infographic
From amateur singer to opera prince
In 1929, Li Guangxi was born into a large family in the old town of Tianjin, a family of 40 or 50 people living together, with 21 sisters and 8 brothers.
The singing voice from an old-fashioned radio gave birth to a teenager's musical dreams. Li Guangxi did not receive a formal musical education since childhood, with this radio, he came into contact with Bach and Beethoven, and thus fell in love with singing, always singing by nature and love.
Li Guangxi is very grateful for the conditions given by his parents, born with a good voice, can remember anything he sings, and can also sing the taste. In addition, he is also a fan of drama and movies, loves to watch Beijing opera, loves to watch foreign movies, knows that it is fake, but always devotes himself to it, sheds tears when he sees tragedies, laughs when he sees interesting, and is always laughed at "stupid".
At the age of 16, Li Guangxi was invited into the choir by his classmates and sang in the choir for four years. There, he learned music theory, staves, and Western vocal methods, and benefited him throughout his life.
At the age of 18, Li Guangxi's father died, the family's livelihood was difficult, he took over his father's job and entered the Tianjin Kailuan Mining Bureau, becoming a stock salesman, specializing in equity capital. At that time, he could get 16 months' salary a year, 160 yuan per month, and he could receive two bags of noodles and 36 tons of coal every month, just like a "gold collar". Although the treatment was good, the experience was short-lived.
In 1953, a performance by the Central Opera House in Tianjin diverted Li Guangxi's life path to opera. After watching the opera, he was deeply shocked, and soon applied for the Central Opera House and was successfully admitted.
In 1956, under the instructions of Premier Zhou Enlai, the Central Opera House began to rehearse the first Western opera "La Traviata" in New China. The 27-year-old Li Guangxi played the male protagonist Alfred in the play, became famous in world war I, and a song "Drinking Song" in the play became the most familiar opera aria in China.
Li Guangxi was first the fourth group of actors, the other three groups are experienced predecessors, when it came to the premiere, soviet experts named Li Guangxi, "I had the audacity to make a debut, many leaders of the literary and art circles went to Beijing to watch the play, after watching the play, this young man is an international student of which country, which expert is the proud disciple?" The dean said that he was nothing but a hobby young man. ”
Opera newcomer Lee Guangxi portrays the characters in a beautiful way, and the music is smooth and touching. Li Guangxi laughed and said that on the one hand, it may benefit from his natural conditions, on the other hand, he likes to watch famous books and movies since he was a child, and when he rehearsed "La Traviata", he always thought of Armand played by American movie star Robert Taylor, "Always think of him, imitate him, everyone said that the taste is right." ”
"La Traviata" made Li Guangxi stand firm, and he successively performed operas such as "Evgeny Onegin" and "Cargo Lang and Miss", known as the "Opera Prince". When acting in opera, all of Lee Guangxi's makeup is done by himself, and he enters the role from makeup, which is convenient for creating a role on stage.
In 1964, in order to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the National Day, Li Guangxi joined the rehearsal of the large-scale musical and dance epic "Dongfang Hong", and a weeping song "On the Songhua River" spread throughout the north and south of the river.
"Later, the reporter asked me, you sang this song with passion, resentment, and nostalgia for your hometown, how did you create it? I said no need to create, I was born in 1929, the Japanese occupied the northeast in 1931, after the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, the whole of North China was occupied by the Japanese, until 1945, when I was 16 years old, I was not a slave to the country, and I accumulated a kind of national hatred in my heart since I was a child, as long as I recalled my past life, I had all kinds of emotions. He said.
Do one thing in your life
"Drinking Song" is Li Guangxi's famous work, and "Toast Song" is another peak in Li Guangxi's artistic career.
When he sang this song for the first time at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1979, Li Guangxi was 50 years old. In that spring, such a cheerful and cheerful song awakened people's long-suppressed passions.
"In fact, this song was written by Shi Guangnan to the mezzo-soprano Su Fengjuan, she didn't seem to be able to taste this taste, so she asked me, how do you see it? I was excited halfway through the song, and it was so good! If you don't want to sing it, give it to me. This song sang out the pride in Li Guangxi's heart, and as he sang it, his heart warmed up, so he quickly wrote a letter to Shi Guangnan and asked him to write a version of the instrument for himself.
The wine and singing flew, and "Toast Song" once again made Li Guangxi red all over China. To what extent is the fire? Thousands of letters flew from all over the country, asking Li Guangxi for a song. He carved according to the score given by Shi Guangnan, and after engraving, he used a mimeograph machine to print it, and then mailed it out of his own pocket. At that time, the national stamp was eight cents a piece, and the burden was too heavy, so the Central Opera House took the initiative to take over the heavy responsibility of mailing. Later, "Toast Song" was released on a record, and it sold a million copies in five days, breaking the record.
Everywhere people ask Li Guangxi to sing "Toast Song", sometimes running several units a day, "also do not give treatment, is happy, everyone loves to listen, I will sing, but not only sing one song, but also have to sing other reserved songs." Suddenly one day, Li Guangxi could not sing, because of fatigue, he had laryngeal muscle weakness, the muscles of the larynx were no longer elastic, and the vocal cords could not be tightened. For the singer, it's a fatal injury. Li Guangxi described that mentally it was like dying, and he often broke into a cold sweat at night.
From peak to trough, the loss of voice lasted for six years. "I have a deep understanding that people live by hope." One morning in 1986, Li Guangxi was pleasantly surprised to find that his voice had returned, it was elastic again, and he could sing again. Everyone said that Li Guangxi hugged a big golden doll again.
In addition to "Toast Song", Li Guangxi also has a song that is constantly repeated on the radio, that is, "Beijing Ode".
It was 1973, and Premier Zhou Enlai was going to celebrate Prince Sihanouk's birthday. Sihanouk loved music and wrote a lot of lyrical songs himself, hoping to ask a singer who was good at lyricism to sing one. Premier Zhou had heard Li Guangxi sing and soon transferred him back to Beijing, where he was working in the countryside.
After the birthday celebration, Li Guangxi found that many composers wrote a batch of songs with passion, and no one sang them. At the invitation of the radio, he recorded three songs in one go - "Long Voyage", "Ode to Beijing" and "Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge".
On National Day in 1973, Li Guangxi sang "Beijing Ode" with soprano Zhang Yuenan, who sang at 6:30 in the morning and 8:30 at night. Later, this song was broadcast on the Central People's Radio for nearly 10 years, the melody was moving, catchy, and many people printed it in their minds as soon as they listened to it.
Someone heard it on the radio, some heard it in factory horns, and many others heard it on the arrivals of the train to Beijing. This song is full of the yearning of many north drifting wanderers for the capital, which always makes people tear up.
What kind of art can infect people? When asked this question, Li Guangxi replied, "It's not the melody of the song score, that word, that key, that's all tools, that's all forms." The really touching thing is your love, and your song has pierced into the hearts of the people. ”
Until he was in his eighties, Li Guangxi's voice was no different from when he was young, and he was still so full, affectionate and moving when he sang.
Looking back on the past, this "evergreen tree of the music world" said that he did one thing in his life, that is, to sing with passion, "all the wisdom, experience, and thought are here, there is no two words, no doubts, no hesitation." ”
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yijia Xu