Author: Zheng Na
As of March 22, it had been viewed 5.44 million times and received more than 11,000 comments – a performance of a less than 3-minute opera song "Goddess Split View" on the overseas platform YouTube. In the video, the beautiful and delicate singing voice of the characters, the exquisite elements of the opera costumes, and the cool and heroic posture of both culture and martial arts have amazed many overseas netizens who are in contact with Chinese opera for the first time, arousing their curiosity and pursuit. For a time, "Chinese opera", "Chinese Peking Opera" and "Chinese music" have become the keywords of hot searches for overseas netizens, driving Chinese culture to ignite the "first fire" in 2022 overseas.
Drama and anime collide to create a spark
Goddess Split View is a new original work derived from the open-world adventure game "Original God" produced and released by China's MihaYou Company.
As a key project of national cultural export, "Original God" has landed in more than 200 countries and regions since its launch in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, "Original God" launched a new role "Yunyan", whose identity is a new generation of opera artists, which combines creation and singing ability, and has its own style, elegant and feminine, just like its own.
The image of Yunyan in "Goddess Splitting View" (courtesy of Miha You)
Under the very personalized character setting, the production team of "Original God" referred to the characters of Hua Mulan, Mu Guiying and Liang Hongyu in Chinese opera, and designed a dramatized costume for Yunyan. In the plot of "Original God", "Goddess Splitting View" is an opera performance "created" by Yunwei with the theme of guarding peace and tranquility, sung by Yang Yang, a national first-class actor at the Shanghai Peking Opera House.
"This collaboration was a very fresh experience for me. Combining opera and the virtual world was something I thought was hard to imagine. Facts have proved that it is indeed an effective way to inherit and promote traditional culture through innovation. Yang Yang said.
Yang Yang is a Peking Opera Xunpai HuaDan, this time by singing for Yunyi, she found that the production team poured a lot of thought into this role, for how to skillfully integrate opera into the virtual world, into the image of a girl, the team put a lot of effort. First of all, although Yunyan is a traditional opera worker, in her bones she is a person who can accept and appreciate new things. Secondly, in addition to working in opera, she also has her own daily life. These qualities make it easy for this character to get close to young people, and also make her affinity and appeal in "endorsing" traditional Chinese culture.
The lyrics and melody of "Goddess Splitting" are full of opera charm, which helps Yang Yang to quickly enter the role situation. In her opinion, although the composition of this singing cavity is not a member of the opera industry, it is also in line with the aesthetics of young people in terms of composition concept, musical elements and instrumentation, and the charm of the vocal cavity of opera is also well reflected in this music.
Chinese opera overseas fire "out of the circle"
In order to let more people enjoy the original Chinese opera, "Goddess Splitting View" has retained Chinese singing voice in China, Britain, Japan, South Korea and other countries. "Zhu Si tied up the rotten Ke Qiao and the snow and mud were far away" "Where the fate is hazy and the immortal edge is monstrous, the heavens are scattered to the Imperial Palace to invite"... The long rhymes and catchy melodies have amazed many foreign netizens.
Female figures in Chinese opera (online image)
As of March 22, "Goddess Split" has reached 5.44 million views on YouTube and received more than 10,000 comments. Some netizens spontaneously introduced the knowledge of Chinese opera in the comment area and received a large number of likes. Not only that, but many netizens ran to the YouTube account of China International Television (CGTN) to watch excerpts from the Peking opera "Noble Concubine Drunk" released two years ago. In a short period of time, the number of views of the video soared to more than 600,000, and the comment area was "crowded" with comments from overseas netizens who were eager to understand Chinese opera because they saw "Goddess Split View".
Some netizens expressed their feelings about enjoying Chinese opera for the first time: "When I first heard Yun yan singing, I was very confused, because I had never been exposed to such a style before, but now that I know, I like it, I think it is very unique and cool!" Some netizens reversed their previous stereotypes of Chinese opera, saying: "I was not a fan of Chinese opera in the past, because when I was a child, I thought opera was boring and weird. Now, I find that I can enjoy Chinese opera, which is very charming and the sound singing is very good. ”
In the message, many foreign netizens said that they fell in love with opera because of "Goddess Splitting View", and some people began to teach themselves Chinese and opera singing, and even began to study the art form of "Goddess Splitting View" in depth. Some foreign netizens also came to China's video websites to learn from them. The interest in Chinese opera not only directly led to a significant increase in the search volume of keywords such as "Chinese opera", "Chinese Peking opera" and "Chinese music" on overseas platforms, but also triggered a wave of secondary creation boom. For example, Japanese composer Jie Yoshida tried to make a NEW AGE (New Age Music) style piano adaptation of "Goddess Split View", which was loved by many netizens.
Absorb new elements and bloom new radiance
At the same time as the overseas "out of the circle", the playback volume of "Goddess Split View" on the domestic video platform Bilibili (hereinafter referred to as "Station B") has also exceeded 19.8 million. Every day, a large number of netizens come to the video to like, forward, and send bullet screens, and are "circled" by traditional opera.
The trend of "relay cover singing" has swept into the domestic opera circles, opera art circles, and folk music circles. Cantonese opera performance artist Zeng Xiaomin, who once "went out of the circle" with the Cantonese opera "White Snake Legend and Love", was the first famous artist to cover the song. At present, her Cantonese opera version of the cover video has nearly 4 million views, becoming the most played work in the currently submitted video. Subsequently, Chen Cheng, Qi Aiyun, Fang Rujiang and other leading figures of Huai opera, Qin Cavity and Ou opera also uploaded their own singing videos.
Soon, "Goddess Split View" appeared Cantonese opera version, Yue opera version, Kunqu version, Huai opera version, Sichuan opera version, Qin Cavity version, commentary version, Wu opera version, pingtan version, as well as Tianjin Allegro version, duo version, Gong Na version, chime version and so on. Artists have come down one after another, attracting a large number of young groups "outside the circle", and some domestic netizens lamented that "I have heard more types of opera these days than in the past 10 years"!
Overseas, foreign netizens who are interested in Chinese opera and are studying Chinese opera have also quickly paid attention to the secondary creative boom of "Goddess Splitting" in China. Some foreign netizens posted a detailed description of the many well-made "two creations" in China. He described this "two creations" trend as a "demon god war", various god-level figures have appeared one after another, and high-quality works have emerged in an endless stream, especially the "confrontation" in the form of Cantonese opera and Huangmei opera.
"The popularity of 'Goddess Split View' in the world has brought a good opportunity for the spread of opera and traditional culture." Zeng Xiaomin said. In her view, the successful embrace of opera and animation once again proves that the beauty of opera can still enter the world of young people, as sung in "Goddess Splitting", "Qugao is not necessarily unknown to everyone, there are zhiyin and clear words", only by understanding and absorbing new cultural elements, innovating and interpreting traditional content, and accumulating thousands of years of opera culture can we find more "Zhiyin" and bloom more dazzling brilliance. (Zheng Na)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition