The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
On March 13, 2022, the famous tenor singer and opera performance artist Li Guangxi passed away at the age of 93. Jiang Li, a beijing opera critic, told the surging news reporter that the old man also came out to perform last year, and his body has been "double-armed", "This time it was due to cerebral infarction, on March 8, the emergency department was admitted to Chaoyang Hospital, and died at about 5 p.m. on the 13th." ”
Li Guangxi, also known as Li Guangxi, is a national first-class actor at the Central Opera House. In the 1950s, he became famous for starring in the opera "La Traviata", and then sang "Songhua On the River", "Ode to Beijing", "Premier Zhou, where are you? Songs such as "Toast Song" and "Gulangyu Wave" are famous all over the world. He has won the first prize of the Ministry of Culture's performance competition, the first Golden Disc Award, the 40 years of the founding of the People's Republic of China Excellent Song Debut Award, the Reform Decade Outstanding Singing Award, etc. In 2010, he was awarded the "Lifetime Achievement Award of Chinese Opera". "Elder Li has never entered the class, but his singing voice is truly unforgettable!" Jiang Li wrote in his personal circle of friends.
Li Guangxi Visual China Infographic
"A quasi is a golden treasure", born to be the material for singing
As the saying goes, "under the nine rivers, a little Tianjin Wei, three pontoon bridges and two passes", relying on the prosperity of transportation, Tianjin has always been a "qu art nest" in modern times. Since the opening of the port in 1860, the west wind has gradually changed to the east, which has made this northern dock city very foreign. In 1929, Li Guangxi was born in Tianjin to an ordinary staff family, showing extraordinary acting talent when he was young, and inherited a good voice from the family. Naughty, he would sometimes stand on the side of the street to learn to collect garbage, the neighbor's wife came out with a garbage basket, and when she saw that there was no one around, she would laugh and scold, "One is Jin Bao (Li Guangxi's nickname), this unlucky child!" ”
When people in Tianjin speak, they call it "learning to be like it." Since childhood, Li Guangxi has loved music and opera, Peking Opera, Jingyun drums, and even the shouting of selling art on the ground can be smoothly spoken, and some people have wanted to introduce him to Master Liu Baoquan to learn cross-talk. As the saying goes, interest is the best teacher. It can be said that in the following half a century or so, he was able to maintain a strong creative enthusiasm, which is inseparable from the unconscious acceptance of interest.
In 1956, Li Guangxi became famous for starring in the first European classical opera in New China, La Traviata. People at the time were very curious, how could this yellow-skinned and dark-eyed Chinese descendant be able to interpret the French aristocratic youth who pursued the traviata beautifully?
"I saw the Hollywood movie 'Gone with the Wind' when I was 11 years old, and I was shocked by that beautiful emotion. Since then, the pursuit of beauty has become my ideal. In his book "The Stage Is My Paradise: Fifty Years of Lee Guangxi's Artistic Life," he recalled. Through an old-fashioned radio, Li Guangxi came into contact with the works of musicians such as Beethoven and Bach, and fell in love with singing. In order to practice singing, he also participated in the church choir and learned staves and Western vocal methods. After his father's death, 17-year-old Li Guangxi took over as a worker at the Kailuan Mining Bureau and used his spare time to participate in performances. Within a few years, he sang almost all over the Tianjin Theater and became a well-known amateur singer.
With his childhood skills and years of stage experience, in 1953, Li Guangxi was admitted to the Central Experimental Opera House (officially renamed the Central Opera House in 1979). Later, he once laughed at himself as a "grass hero" who did not have a strict teacher-inheritance relationship in the Chinese vocal music industry and had not received strict training from vocal educators in the conservatory, "Maybe I was born to be a piece of singing material, standing on the stage I feel like I have found my way." ”
Occupy the theater and "turn yourself on the stage from the inside out into a playmaker"
After the founding of New China, the focus of the party's work shifted from the countryside to the cities. "Premier Zhou Enlai said that in the past we were 'surrounded by cities by the countryside', the conditions were harsh and there were no theaters, and after the liberation of the whole country, we occupied the big cities. If there are theaters in big cities, we have to 'occupy theaters'. In 1955, the famous Soviet soprano Wa A. Thi Minqiyeva came to China to teach, and after a year of study, the theater decided to arrange a foreign opera as a graduation report for the students. Under the direction of Jie Min Qiyewa, Verdi's opera La Traviata became the first Western opera produced and performed by Chinese.
It should be pointed out that in order to make it easy for Chinese audiences to understand the content of the opera, Russian expert Miao Lin and musician Liu Shirong translated all the scripts and lyrics into Chinese, which became the Chinese version of "La Traviata" that has been handed down to this day. During the rehearsal, Lee Kwang-hee was transferred from the male protagonist's group C to the A group, and played the male protagonist Alfred Armand in the first public performance after that.
"How to act as a foreigner, how to sing Western opera?" This is the first time since the founding of New China. Li Guangxi later recalled that when he received this task, he first thought of Garbo's "La Traviata", and he was very obsessed with this movie, from the actors to the story, from the scene to the shape, "When playing Alfred, I thought about how to show the image of Robert Taylor in my mind on the stage. Even the action of opening the door borrows from his performance in the movie. ”
At the beginning of its establishment, a large number of artists came from Yan'an and did not understand the lifestyle of foreigners in "La Traviata". "Soviet experts taught us how to turn ourselves into French in terms of image, voice, and temperament." How foreign gentlemen communicate with people, how they walk, how they stand politely, and how they look at people are all things they learn. "Later, everyone said that I was right to borrow from the film." In Li Guangxi's view, to arrange a play, you must turn yourself into a character in the play from the inside out on the stage. And this is the essence of opera performance: opera singing is a kind of singing based on performance, and the superb singing skills and the interpretation of the characters of the three points are equally divided in artistic expression.
In December 1956, "La Traviata" premiered at the Beijing Tianqiao Theater, and the entire literary and art circles were immersed in the excitement of "Chinese can also rehearse Western operas". Li Guangxi's performance in the play has been able to completely get rid of the influence of traditional Chinese folk songs and opera singing methods, and can be well integrated into Western music culture, and the breath use and resonance cavity of the bel canto singing method are very in place. It can be said that as soon as it is played, it uses transparent and tough sound quality to fully freeze the image of the protagonist. Later, he summarized his singing experience in Western opera into five words: "word, sound, love, rhyme, and god", and gradually explored the performance paradigm of "singing in opera".
Li Guangxi recalled that at that time, "La Traviata" was not only full in Beijing, but also attracted fans from all over the country to watch. "At that time, China's foreign dramas were the only ones, and many local literary and art workers heard about it and came to see it. At that time, it took 4 days to walk from Guangzhou to Beijing, and it took a week from Xinjiang to Beijing, but they all came. Li Guangxi also became popular for his outstanding performance, from 1956 to 1984, "La Traviata" countless times he played the male lead, until the age of 55. Since then, with his outstanding performances in operas such as "Liu Hulan", "Song of the Prairie", "Cargo Lang and Miss", "Yepgeny Onegin", "Ayiguri" and other operas, he has become the "Opera Prince" who was unique in the scenery of that era.
"Beijing Ode" marks a comeback, and the popular "Toast Song" is "snatched"
What really made Lee Guangxi a household name in the country is due to the fact that he sang several famous songs in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1964, under the personal leadership of Premier Zhou, li Guangxi sang "On the Songhua River" in the large-scale revolutionary epic song and dance evening "Dongfang Hong" organized by the Ministry of Culture. This famous song of the War of Resistance, which was once praised by Chairman Mao as "one song worth two divisions," was interpreted by him to tears, and since then he has become the best candidate to sing this song.
In 1966, the "Cultural Revolution" broke out. Overnight, Li Guangxi was denounced as a "poisonous weed in the service of revisionism, capitalism, and imperialism" and sent to work on the outskirts of Tianjin. In 1972, Prince Sihanouk of the Kingdom of Cambodia, who lived in Beijing, celebrated his 50th birthday and wanted to have a concert and asked a lyrical tenor to sing his vocal works. At that time, in China, except for a few model plays, passionate slogan songs were sung everywhere. Premier Zhou thought of the singers of the Central Opera House, and with a paper order, Li Guangxi returned to Beijing. In the same year, he recorded a new song "Beijing Ode" for the Central People's Radio, which immediately became popular all over the country once it was broadcast, marking his personal official comeback.
"The brilliant morning glow rises in the golden Beijing. Solemn music reports the dawn of the motherland. Ah--------------------------------- The heart of the motherland, a symbol of unity. The pride of the people, the guarantee of victory..." In Director Jiang Wen's debut film "Sunny Days", "Beijing Ode" became the background music for The scene of Ma Xiaojun twisting his waist in the hutong and pedaling hard, which shows the charm of this song through the times.
At the beginning of 1977, "People's Musician" Shi Guangnan based on the poet Ke Yan's poem "Premier Zhou, Where Are You?" Tearfully composing the song of the same name in memory of the beloved Premier Zhou, the composer first thought of Li Guangxi, who was also in tears after trying to sing a few sentences... The soulful singing spread in all directions through the airwaves, and Li Guangxi once again aroused the strong resonance of the people of the whole country, becoming the second milestone of his personal singing career after "Beijing Ode".
In 1978, the reform and opening up, the whole country was ideologically emancipated, and the whole society was thriving. Li Guangxi's most popular "Toast Song" was born in this period, and he later joked that this song was "snatched" by himself. It turned out that when Shi Guangnan composed the "Toast Song", at first it was intended to be sung by the mezzo-soprano singer of the theater, and Li Guangxi liked it very much at first sight, and practiced after asking the composer to make a slight adjustment. At that time, there were few cheerful songs in society, mostly songs against the "Gang of Four", and "Toast Song" was once considered to be "calling on everyone to drink", and it was controversial within the theater.
In a foreign affairs performance that year, Li Guangxi boldly sang for the first time in public with the help of the "Shangfang Sword" that the organizer asked to sing a cheerful song, and won the full house. After that, he sang again at the "Spring Festival Literary and Art Gala" held by CCTV in 1979. Some commentators said, "He is not only singing with his voice, but also with full enthusiasm and fiery heart, not only singing his strong resonance for the new era, but also singing the joy of the whole country for the country and the nation to regain political liberation." ”
"Teacher Li, sing some popular songs!"
In 1994, Li Guangxi published an article in the Beijing Daily entitled "Let the People Delight and Delight", reviewing his feelings about cultural development over the past few decades. He said bluntly in the article, "Before the reform and opening up, everyone's cultural life form was simple, basically going to the theater to see performances. But after the 1980s, with television, everyone had more choices, and theater performances were affected to some extent. "Coupled with the introduction of popular music, more and more young people are attracted to fashionable cultural and artistic forms. He remembers several times when he sang on stage, and there were young audience members shouting, "Teacher Li, sing some popular songs!" ”
When the average old artist hears such a statement, he will most likely regard it as a provocation of the "fearless of the ignorant". But perhaps he was already taking the road of self-taught, and Li Guangxi never had too many portal views and domain distinctions in his heart. He has always believed that the two most basic things that art wants to convey to people are beauty and understanding. "If you are not beautiful, you are not art; if you don't understand, you can't feel art."
After a brief loss, Li Guangxi quickly changed his mind, "The trend of the times is irresistible, an era has a trend of the times, and now young people like rock and roll and like pop, which can be understood." He felt that after the reform and opening up, the wishes of individuals were expressed, "no matter what preferences, you can find objects to appreciate, which is the expression of cultural development." ”
Because he liked sports since he was a child, he made swimming a lifelong daily habit after becoming famous, and Li Guangxi would also put a swimming cap and swim trunks in his luggage when he traveled on business. Good living habits and a young and open mind make him look like a middle-aged man even if he is too old. He once said, "If an artist loses his curiosity about the things around him, then his artistic life is declared exhausted, and it is impossible to create a living work of art." ”
In recent years, in addition to being able to see Lee Guangxi singing his famous works at large parties. What surprised many viewers even more was that he would also appear in some variety shows, not only sang Tian Zhen's "Persistence", but also sang Cui Jian's "Flower Room Girl", a song of Zhou Huajian's "Let Me Rejoice and Make Me Worry", he did not forget to laugh at himself, "Many fans and friends said that this song is very good, how I sang people cry as soon as I sang." (Laughs) The most enjoyable thing is that at the 2014 Beijing TV Spring Festival Gala, Li Guangxi, Yang Hongji and Liu Bingyi, three old artists, dressed in "Black Tie" dresses, jointly sang S.H.E.'s "I Don't Want to Grow Up", "I don't want to want to grow up, when I grow up, there will be no fairy tales in the world..."
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yijia Xu