Speaking of Princess Sisi, everyone may know a little bit about her, which has to be attributed to the "Princess Sisi" trilogy starring Romei Schneider in the 1950s, which vividly expressed the innocent, frank and natural elf princess. Princess Sisi is full of fun, mellow and sweet appearance to soothe the trauma of the German people after World War II, and her unique beauty and romantic love with the Austrian king have also enchanted the world.
Princess Sissi stills
But when you put this dreamy and fairytale woman into the long river of history, you will find that "Princess Sissi" is just her nickname, and her real name, elizabeth Amerie Eugenie, she is not only the Austrian empress who stabilized the regime with her beauty, but also has a life of bullying and misfortune. The greatest restoration of this historical truth is undoubtedly the musical "Elisabeth", composed by German musicians Michael and Sylvester Levay in 1992, which was first performed in the Vienna Theater and became the most popular and influential musical in the world.
In 1996, "Elizabeth" was introduced by the Takarazuka Opera Company in Japan and adapted into "Elizabeth - The Wheel Dance of Love and Death", which is the drama we will focus on today.
Elizabeth stills
"Elizabeth - The Wheel Dance of Love and Death" has been a great success with gorgeous scenes, superb acting skills, moving music, beautiful dance postures and twisting stories, and has been performed more than 100 times in 7 versions so far, and finally became one of the three classic plays of Takarazuka Opera with the same name as "The Rose of Versailles" and "Gone with the Wind", which is loved by many opera fans in China, and the jianghu status of the 98 version of the Zeus group is even more difficult to shake.
At that time, Ziyue Asado, who starred in the male service, interpreted the powerful aura of the god of death with his feminine and handsome face and handsome and free body, and his low and magnetic voice perfectly showed the gloomy, sensitive, amorous and complex heart of the god of death.
Hua Zong, who plays Elizabeth, switches freely between the delicate and lovely Princess Bavarian, the stunning Austrian queen and the lonely Hungarian queen, interpreting Elizabeth's legendary life vividly and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Chinese audiences fell in love with "Princess Sisi", who referred to herself as "a grain of sand" based on the harmonic sound of "Elizabeth".
Takarazuka Opera Company insists on playing men with women, and while presenting the purity, dignity and elegance unique to women, it can also show male elegance and handsomeness.
This opera is set against the backdrop of Princess Sisi's life experience, creatively adding the role of "God of Death", who fell in love with Princess Sisi at first sight, but being loved by the God of Death only means the end of life - foreshadowing that Princess Sisi is a spirit belonging to nature, innocent and lively, as soon as she enters the court, she is bound by etiquette, and her beautiful and brilliant life will gradually wither.
Sissi was a young princess of Bavaria before marrying into the court, and her aunt was the empress dowager of Austria.
She is a playful, barding, dreaming, curious, nature-loving, unrestrained girl, always thinking about how to escape French lessons and boring relatives gatherings every day, begging her father to take her to horseback hunting.
She had almost died of play, and in the dark world, todd, the god of death who had been in the underworld for many years, did not take her life, but fell in love with her at first sight, hopeless.
("This eye burns my heart / The look pierces me / Even the breath clings to me / Melts my cold heart / Just a teenage girl makes everything fall apart / Just a human being / Just shock me")
Death TOD loves her countenance and vows to make Sissi willingly fall in love with him while she is alive. ("I give my life back to you and wait for your love / When you wake up you will forget all my appearance / I won't give up until you say you love me / I keep chasing you")
Just like the real historical story, the Austrian emperor did not look at the blind date chosen by his mother, but fell in love with the innocent and fresh Sissi, but the lively and active Sissi, who liked the field life, was a rural wild maid in the eyes of the empress dowager who held real power, and she ordered Sissi to accept the etiquette norms of the court and show the dignified atmosphere of the empress's mother.
("I don't, do what the queen of the body / Nor is it, the cute manipulated toy / I am not your thing, I belong to myself / Along the slender wire, step by step forward / Hold back the trembling, I overlook, the whole world under my feet / Life is full of adventure and legend, is myself")
Sissi has never been able to give up her free nature, and she has never been able to assume the responsibilities and obligations of becoming empress, which makes her lose the right to raise her own children, which is very painful. During this time, Death invited Sissi to leave with him again and again, but Sissi insisted that she belonged only to herself and did not belong to anyone else, and used her beauty to stabilize the state power.
("Don't!) I don't want to die yet, I haven't tasted life yet / I want to live bravely and free myself with my hands")
While the whole country was proud of having a beautiful empress, Empress Sophie was always dissatisfied with Sissi, and the angry and corrupt Empress Sophie did not hesitate to recruit prostitutes for her son to sabotage their love under the influence of the chancellor - directly leading to the breakdown of the marriage between Sissi and the emperor and the departure of Sissi. During Sissi's travels around the world, their sons saw the corruption of the country and the stubbornness of their fathers, and launched an uprising but suffered defeat, and the emperor was greatly disappointed by him.
A few years later, Sissi was finally willing to return to the court, and her son asked her for help, but she was so overwhelmed by her grief that she could not reach out to her son, and finally the prince shot himself under the distrust of his father and the helplessness of his mother.
Sissi is devastated by her son's death and begs Death to take her away, but Death sees that Sissi does not truly love him at this time, so she refuses Sissi's request. It was not until the god of death confronted the deceased emperor that he felt that no one could save Sissi's soul, and he did not hesitate to use the power of civil revolution to accelerate the demise of the dynasty and force Elizabeth's despair of life.
At the end of the opera, Sissi is no longer the queen, and the grim reaper dressed in white appears in front of her, and Sissi opens her arms and pounces on the grim reaper.
In this way, "Elizabeth" takes love and death as the theme, takes Elizabeth's love tragedy as the clue, ends with the assassination, presents the laughter, tears, grief, and enlightenment experienced by Sissi in front of the audience, and through the tragic fate that can never be changed, the real Elizabeth, who has never been clear, is more vividly presented in front of the audience, so that Sissi's inner struggle, depression and resistance, and helplessness are vividly expressed.
Some critics once believed that the forbidden love between the god of death TOD and Elizabeth made the elegant musical fall into the cliché, but it is undeniable that compared with the German version of the god of death's indifference and blind desire for death, the Takarazuka version of the god of death has the image of joy and sorrow and jealousy, which is more vivid, so that the serious musical drama brings the unique girlish feelings of Takarazuka opera and narrows the distance between classical drama and the audience.
Although Takarazuka Opera's Elizabeth was controversial in its adaptation of Grim Reaper, its comic-like and romantic stage set and the perfect interpretation of it made it a well-deserved classic in the minds of many audiences.