As China's national essence, opera art has been increasingly respected by young people under the trend of "national tide" in recent years. On video sites such as Station B, songs with opera singing voices can attract a large number of users, and content related to traditional culture can always get strong support from young netizens.
Why is the art of opera, originally considered "past tense", so popular among young people today? You may not believe it, but it is closely related to the strong recommendation of the game industry.
Games are not only a form of entertainment, but also a cultural carrier. In particular, the emphasis on self-developed ancient online games is even more respectful of traditional culture. At this time, the art of opera entered the eyes of game developers with its unique visual aesthetics and cultural connotations and became an excellent "reference object".
And to say that the game company that loves the art of opera the most in China, it must be NetEase. It actually built a thousand-year theater stage in its game "Against the Water and Cold", and spent four full years in the world to move all five of China's most famous opera arts into the game, realizing players' "freedom to listen to opera".
As the most representative ancient style online game of NetEase, "Against the Water and Cold" has always paid great attention to the promotion of traditional culture, after referring to the history of the Song to create the human fireworks in the game, flipping through the classics to reproduce the festival customs of the Great Song Dynasty, game developers quickly focused on the art of national opera, wanting to reproduce this composite cultural inheritance that integrates literature, singing, dance, art and other elements through games.
However, it is not difficult to borrow the art of opera to make a moonlight or two or launch a set of game fashion, but it is not easy to truly complete the deep output of traditional culture in cooperation and at the same time perfectly integrate game scenes. In order to solve this problem, the "Against the Water and Cold" team came up with a plan to invite famous domestic opera artists to participate, and then accurately reproduce opera passages into the game with the help of motion capture and digital restoration.
In 2020, the team of "Against the Water and Cold" invited Kong Aiping, a top master in the domestic opera industry and winner of the Plum Blossom Award, the highest award for opera, and many top opera artists such as Shi Xiaming, Cong Haiyan, Wen Shanshan, Xiang Liya to jointly provide their voices, and restored the immortal works "Peony Pavilion" and "Liang Zhu" in ancient opera literature to the game one by one through Hollywood-level motion capture technology and ultra-high-specification audio production technology.
In order to present the best listening experience, the game has also specially developed a "Liyun Pavilion" that combines classical aesthetics with modern aesthetics and exclusive scenes for opera, and performs wonderful folding plays at a fixed time every day.
What made the official surprise of "Against the Water and Cold" was that after the launch of "Liyun Pavilion", it won unanimous praise from players. Many young players book tickets two or three days in advance in order to listen to the theater, and every time the theater opens, the venue will be overcrowded.
Inspired by the enthusiasm of the players, and at the same time in order to better spread the beauty of traditional culture. The team of "Against the Water and Cold" decided to take "opera linkage" as a fixed tradition, and added new plays to "Liyun Pavilion" on "World Theatre Day" in March every year.
In 2021, the "Against the Water and Cold" team invited Mr. Jiang Jianguo and Ms. Wu Yaling, director of Anhui Huangmei Drama Theater, to restore the classics "Tianxian Match" and "Female Horse" in Huangmei's tune to the game.
In 2022, the team of "Against the Water and Cold" joined hands with Mr. Wu Suzhen, a famous Yu opera artist and winner of the Plum Blossom Award, and Mr. Wang Shun, the representative of young actors of Yu Opera, to make the excerpt of the famous song "Mulan" of Yu Opera "Brother Liu's Speech" enter the game stage.
In 2023, the "Against the Water and Cold" team will specially invite Zhang Xinyue, the third-generation descendant of Mei Pai, a national first-class actor and winner of the Chinese Drama Plum Blossom Award, to restore the movements, expressions, singing tone and other details in the Peking Opera performance one by one, and perfectly reproduce the famous Peking Opera segment "Mu Guiying Hangs the Commander" into the game.
Since then, "Against the Water and Cold" has perfectly reproduced the five most famous Chinese opera genres in the game, namely Kunqu Opera, Yue Opera, Huangmei Opera, Yu Opera and Peking Opera.
With the launch of "Mu Guiying Hangs the Commander" in "Liyun Pavilion", the majority of players have begun a new round of "listening to the tide", which fully proves the vigorous and infectious power of traditional art, as long as it is reasonably promoted and disseminated, this kind of shining classics that have been shining for thousands of years can be popular again and rejuvenated.
After four years of smashing traditional opera culture, "Against the Water and Cold", which has put all five famous Chinese operas on the electronic stage, has contributed its own strength to the promotion of traditional culture. What do you think of this novel way of expression?