On February 19, 2011, Yue opera master Yuan Xuefen passed away at the age of 89. Time flies, and March 26 this year marks her centenary. Regarding the value of the master, the famous theater theorist Liu Housheng said as early as 11 years ago: "Yuan Xuefen not only belongs to the Chinese opera and theater circles, she is also a cultural giant." Indeed, excellent talent, exquisite skills, outstanding creation are self-evident, Yuan Xuefen's artistic ideas, reform spirit and its achievements, "in the contemporary theater industry can not find a second person." This is where the master transcends craftsmanship and sublimates to the level of culture.
One
Since the birth of Yue opera, it is only in its early 100s. At its beginning, it was just a small play with a simple story, monotonous singing voice and no stage beauty, called "Little Song Class", because the accompanying instrument was only a leather drum, a pair of ruler plates, and the drum boards hit each other to make a "tuk" sound, so it was also called "tuk ban". After entering Shanghai from Shengxian County, the "small song class" or "Du class" soon changed from a male class to a female class, gradually opening up the Shanghai performing arts market, and became known as "Yue opera". The industry believes that if the development of "women's Yue opera" is divided into two stages and two representative figures are introduced, then Yao Shuijuan is pushed forward and Yuan Xuefen is later pushed.
Yuan Xuefen debuted in the early 1930s, first performing in Hangzhou and other places, and came to Shanghai in 1938 to co-perform "The History of Liang Zhu Lamentation" with Ma Zhanghua, a "lightning boy", known as the "new queen" of Yue opera. However, Ma Zhanghua died tragically in 1942, and Yuan Xuefen lost her partner and returned to her hometown for a time. When she was invited to Shanghai again, she had already made up her mind to build a "new Yue opera". At that time, Yue opera, after being improved by the artists led by Yao Shuijuan, had a new look, and it poured over the audience in Shanghai like the first bloom of flowers, but at the same time, there was also the phenomenon of blindly imitating Peking Opera, movies and civilized dramas, resulting in similar repertoire and monotonous performances. "Yue opera is not like Yue opera", so that Yuan Xuefen saw the crisis behind the prosperity and the necessity of artistic innovation.
Yuan Xuefen's performing arts are also influenced by dramas and movies, she also loves Kunqu opera very much, and her personality performances, rigorous and standardized scripts, and elegant and beautiful singing are all fascinated by her, but she is not willing to copy and imitate, but thinks about how to use them and use them until it completely becomes the inherent possession of Yue opera art. When Yue opera artists acted, when their performance roles were greatly hit, they always shouted "Ah ah" first, and then dressed up as "cockfighting eyes" as fainting. Yuan Xuefen felt that this kind of acting method could not impress the audience, so in the play "The Broken Bowel Man", she adopted the performance method of the foreign actors in the movie "Madame Curie" - first silent, then moving her eyes, and crying bitterly when her eyes fell on the wooden fish. Under her influence and drive, Yue opera artists learned a lot from drama and Kunqu opera. Yuan Xuefen often said that Yue opera has two "milk maidens", one is drama and the other is Kunqu opera. From the drama, Yue opera absorbs the realistic expression of portraying characters and expressing ideas; from Kun opera, Yue opera absorbs the aesthetic interpretation method of exquisite modeling and elegant singing.
In the early days of Yue opera, there was no script, and the artists relied on "Mr. Say Drama" to explain and arrange it before the performance, and after taking the stage, they all relied on themselves to play. Yuan Xuefen felt that it was difficult to ensure the stability of quality and must be reformed, so she used most of her money to hire screenwriters and directors, becoming the first person in the Yue opera industry to completely abolish the "curtain system". She has clear requirements for screenwriters - writing new plays strives to appreciate elegance and customs, changes old plays as much as possible to extract rough and refined, and strives to improve the style and taste of Yue opera. She also has clear requirements for actors - in the rehearsal stage of a play, all actors can give opinions and make changes to the script; once on stage, they must perform precisely and in place according to the content specified in the script, thus eliminating the haste and roughness that actors inevitably produce due to temporary words. At the same time, Yuan Xuefen has also made a lot of creative changes in makeup, choreography, lighting, etc., such as the use of spotlights on the Stage of Yue Opera for the first time, which not only increases the brightness but also highlights the key areas; the lampshade is covered with colored paper, which creates a dreamlike atmosphere with music...
In this way, Yuan Xuefen extracted the high-quality elements of artistic styles such as drama and film, absorbed and digested them, and integrated them into the choreography, directing, music, and choreography of Yue opera, completing the all-round reform of Yue opera and comprehensively improving the artistic ability and cultural taste of Yue opera. Under the leadership of Yuan Xuefen and her "Snow Sound Troupe", other Yue opera celebrities and troupes have hired choreographers, reformed choreography, and invested in the construction of "new Yue opera".
Two
The opera is sung again, and the song is sung in a heavy way. The singing voice of Yue opera originated from Shengxian folk songs, minor keys and Buddhist songs, and absorbed the "lake tune" of Hangzhou and Huzhou and the tune of Shaoxing Daban, forming the earliest singing cavity system. After entering Shanghai, the artists imitated the Peking Opera class, with gongs and drums and silk strings, resulting in a "four-work tune" suitable for female vocal singing.
In November 1943, Yuan Xuefen performed "Xiangfei", and when the character was surprised to see the death of her husband, Yuan Xuefen sang: "My husband who suffered a bitter life!" The tone is out of the range of the "quartet". The violinist Zhou Baocai also adjusted the strings, using "bright strings" and playing them with broken bows. The mourning and mourning were sung, the music was deep and low, and many viewers wept with the "Fragrant Concubine". This fixed string is called "hezhi" in the ruler score, and Yuan Xuefen's new cavity "ruler tone" is named after it.
The "ruler tone" is developed from the "four-tone tone", which is suitable for high, medium and low sound ranges, and the actor can flexibly use it according to his own voice, and can also change the speed rhythm between various plates. This tune soon became popular and gradually became the main theme of the new Yue opera. In most of Yuan Xuefen's subsequent performances, he used the ruler tone as the base tone and created many famous segments. For the opera genre, the significance of the emergence of a new cavity is extremely far-reaching. The "Yuan School" singing voice established on the "ruler tone" has a simple melody, deep feelings, euphemisms, and mellow charm, which not only has a unique high standard in the performing arts of Yue opera, but also has a profound impact on the richness and development of Yue opera genres. Qi Yaxian's "Qi Pai", Zhang Yunxia's "Zhang Pai", Jin Caifeng's "Jin Pai", Lü Ruiying's "Lü Pai", etc., were all developed from the "Yuan Faction". Composer Liu Ru once commented on the value of "ruler tone" as "a tune has developed a kind of drama", as he said.
Three
Yue opera is good at interpreting ancient themes and love themes, especially for "Miss Gui, the Fallen Prince, Private lifelong back garden" and other talented and beautiful dramas, the audience also loves to watch. Yuan Xuefen believes that this is both the advantage of Yue opera and the disadvantage of Yue opera - the theme is narrow, the plot is similar, and the performance lacks breakthrough, which is not conducive to the long-term development of the drama, and it is necessary to try to break through.
In March 1946, Yuan Xuefen read Lu Xun's novel "Blessing", and out of great sympathy for Xianglin Sister-in-law, out of a strong sense of social responsibility, and out of desire to break through the theme of Yue opera, she decided to adapt the novel "Blessing" into the Yue opera "Xianglin Sister-in-law".
Without the love of the hand, without the water sleeves that are good at, can Yue opera still attract the audience? Yuan Xuefen confidently believes that there are also many scenes in the traditional repertoire of Yue opera that show the suffering of women, and believes that the audience will definitely sympathize with the tragic fate of Xiang Lin's sister-in-law. More importantly, reflecting real life is also the responsibility of Yue opera, "playing Xianglin Sister-in-law is to make women in real life no longer repeat the fate of Xianglin Sister-in-law." ”
"Xianglin Sister-in-law" was auditioned in May of the same year. Yuan Xuefen plays Xiang Lin's sister-in-law, from youth to old age, from Hua Dan to Lao Dan. Colloquial recitation and life-like actions broke through many traditional performance programs, presenting powerful ideas and artistic touching, shocking a large number of audiences. A report in the headline of the supplement of the "Current Affairs New Daily" said: "'Xiang lin concubine' should not only be a snow sound troupe, but also a monument to the entire Yue opera circle." ”
Yuan Xuefen was not satisfied with this. She believes that the role of Xianglin Sister-in-law is worth spending her life to shape. Sure enough, in the following forty years, she made four major revisions and processing of "Xianglin Sister-in-law", making it a milestone repertoire of Yue opera reform and a classic repertoire of Yue opera.
Four
Yuan Xuefen's life is a life of unremitting struggle for Yue opera to improve its artistic standards and continuously improve its cultural taste. After the founding of New China, Yuan Xuefen successively served as the president and honorary president of Shanghai Yue Opera Theatre, not only continuing to develop women's Yue opera, but also supporting "male and female co-performances", further enriching the subject areas and performance capabilities of Yue opera; actively carrying out the construction of high-quality plays, so that the four classics of "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Xi Xiang Ji" and "Xiang Lin Concubine" could be consolidated and carried forward; and efforts were made to promote the academic construction of Yue opera, and initiated and presided over the compilation of "Yue Opera Stage Beauty" and "Yue Opera Art Theory". So that Yue opera finally has its own theoretical system; extensive social activities, active participation in politics and deliberations, drumming for Yue opera, calling for opera, at the same time, writing hundreds of articles in decades, involving art, life, society, cultural construction...
Yuan Xuefen is a person of integrity, "innocent and innocent, seriously singing" is the motto she pursues throughout her life. In the 1964 film "Stage Sisters" directed by Xie Jin, the character prototype of the protagonist Zhu Chunhua is Yuan Xuefen, and the film also uses the famous phrase "being innocent and innocent, singing seriously".
In 1995, Yuan Xuefen, who had retreated to the second line, served as the director of the jury of the Shanghai Magnolia Drama Performing Arts Award. This is a theatrical art platform based in Shanghai and facing the whole country. In the more than ten years as the director of the jury, Yuan Xuefen has extensively invited actors from various drama genres and troupes to participate in the appraisal to improve the popularity and influence of the award; on the other hand, she has strictly maintained the authority and purity of the award, requiring all judges to "invite guests and do not want gifts", and with the principle of "three gongs" and the good image of "ice and jade purity", she has won a good reputation in the industry and promoted the prosperity and healthy development of the theater industry in Shanghai and the whole country.
As Liu Housheng said, Yuan Xuefen was born for Yue opera, for drama, and for the Chinese culture that is endlessly born and inherited. She was born in the spring, died in the spring, and when she disappeared, the snow turned into water, and there was a sound. The author once filled in the words of mourning in the year of her death; now when she is born a hundred years ago, she sings again to express her remembrance-
The water is out of the maid, and the tuk takes advantage of the black canopy. Small songs are difficult to sing and sing, only for this love. Walking through the bustling ocean field, I couldn't bear to see the withered sisters, and the lightning disappeared without a trace. Half-hiding the tears of Yingtai, the new queen is just red.
Xiangfei hates, mountains and rivers love, and ruler cavity sect. Curtain opened the new era, raised his staff and asked the sky. The heart is stronger than the man, the man is clearer than the snowflake, and the sight has dissolved. Listen to the spring water in your ear, and ring the ringing.
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