Peking Opera performances have a long history of advertising in newspapers, and advertisements have developed with the development of Peking Opera. I now miss the Peking Opera advertisements in the newspapers of the 1950s and 1960s.
Peking Opera advertisements, including performance units, repertoire, starring actors, time, place, ticket prices, etc., are clear at a glance, and the audience can purchase tickets in advance according to the advertisement. The advertising pages of newspapers are also a window to observe the tendencies of various troupes to perform repertoire, and even to see the direction of the government-led policy of literary and artistic opera. In the 1950s and 1960s, when I was still in middle school, I had no conditions to buy tickets to listen to plays, so I had to watch advertisements in front of the Beijing Daily in the school newspaper column every day. In the long run, I have really long insights, and I have obtained a lot of knowledge about Peking Opera and information about troupes and actors from small advertisements.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, advertisements for the Peking Opera Stage in the capital were published in Beijing Daily, and also published in People's Daily and Beijing Evening News, but they were not as large as Beijing Daily. Beijing Daily not only publishes Peking Opera, but also various programs such as movies, musical songs and dances, local dramas, and acrobatics, as well as performances by foreign literary and art groups in China and performances by troupes from various provinces and cities in Jinjing. At that time, the Beijing Daily was generally four pages, and the performance advertisements accounted for nearly half of the newspaper's page, that is, the second half of the third page, and sometimes too many advertisements had to be transferred to the second half of the fourth page. In 1958, the Spring Festival performance preview was published on a full page in the Beijing Daily, and the upper quarter was a movie trailer, with new premieres such as "Nurse's Diary", "Before and After the Stage", "Lusheng Love Song" and so on, and more than 20 theaters were released at the same time. Three-quarters of the floor below is a preview of various theatrical performances. There are 16 theater troupes in Peking Opera performances alone, in addition to drama, opera, commentary, opera, Hebei Zizi, acrobatics and other performances. It was really colorful and full of flowers, and just by relying on this full-page advertisement, we could see that although there was a shortage of materials at that time, the spiritual life of the broad masses of the people was still very rich.
The National Day in 1959 was a ten-year celebration, and all the theaters and troupes were engaged in new dramas to make gift performances. On the eve of the National Day, the advertisements for the tribute repertoire are dazzling and dazzling. Mei Lanfang starred in "Mu Guiying Hangs Up the Marshal", Li Yuanye of the Beijing Opera House of China and Ma Tanqiu of the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe jointly performed "The Battle of Chibi", "The Orphan of Zhao" starring Ma Tanzhangqiu of the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe, "The Princess of Shuangyang" starring Shang Xiaoyun, and "Xun Guanniang" starring Xun Huisheng. Many masters of art took the stage to perform, creating a colorful festive atmosphere.
The size of the performance advertisement of each troupe is not the same, in order to highlight the new screenwriting, the troupe discharges new plays often to increase publicity, advertising should be done prominently, the general advertisement uses one column, and the advertisement for the performance of the new play is to use two columns, which is very atmospheric, the name of the new play advertisement is often the inscription of the celebrity, and sometimes it is also equipped with a portrait of the opera character, so this kind of advertising is very artistic, worth appreciating and collecting. Due to the different fees for newspaper advertisements, the advertisements of some small theater troupes are very small, two or three lines, while the advertisements of the China Peking Opera House and the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe are relatively large, especially the advertisements for new plays are even more eye-catching. It is said that Li Wanchun pays special attention to advertising, and the performance advertisements of the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe are all designed by himself, so they are different.
In September 1956, in order to celebrate the establishment of the Beijing Peking Opera Workers Federation, three commemorative performances were held, two of which were held in the Zhongshan Park Music Hall, and the three-day repertoire was "Eight Wax Temple", "Lock Five Dragons" and "Shilang Visiting Mother", which brought together almost all the famous Peking opera artists in Beijing to participate in the performance, which was a grand event in the theater world at that time. The Beijing Daily made a special treatment for the advertisement for this performance, and the width of the advertisement was expanded from the ordinary one column to three columns, nearly half of the newspaper page. The title of the performance "Celebrating the Commemorative Performance of the Founding of the Beijing Peking Opera Workers Federation" is very eye-catching with the art body, the following is the actors participating in the performance in the order of appearances in three rows, and then the bottom is the title of the three plays, also written in fine art style, and then below is the list of Xiao Changhua and other art directors, and at the bottom is the performance time and place. The entire advertisement is also framed with flowers, which is more eye-catching. It was the largest advertisement published in newspapers in the fifties and sixties.
I remember that in the 1950s, the four top players of the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe went on a tour in Shanghai, and in those days Wen Wei Po was very popular in Beijing, because fans could see the performance of the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe from the advertisements published every day by Wen Wei Po.
Since the early 1960s, the whole country has carried out large-scale peking opera modern opera activities, and various troupes have rehearsed modern operas, and newspaper advertisements have also paid special attention to the performance of modern opera. In September 1964, Beijing held the Peking Opera Modern Opera Observation and Performance Conference, and theater troupes from all over the country launched more than 30 modern operas to perform in five theaters at the same time, with a very large scale. The Beijing Daily launched a whole column of advertisements to publicize it, showing that the central authorities attached great importance to this observation performance, and paved the way for the launch of the Cultural Revolution and the emergence of model plays.
After the fall of the "Gang of Four", traditional opera gradually resumed, Peking Opera ushered in the second spring, the four troupes of the Beijing Opera House of China, the six troupes of the Beijing Opera House, as well as the comrades-in-arms Peking Opera Troupe and the Fenglei Peking Opera Troupe competed to perform, the Capital Peking Opera Stage was prosperous, and the performance advertisements of the Beijing Daily were also fully reflected.
With the decline of Peking Opera, the number of Peking Opera performances decreased significantly, and the advertisements for Peking Opera performances became more and more depressed in newspapers, and eventually the performance advertisements of Beijing Daily completely disappeared. Are there no Peking Opera performances in Beijing? Non also! At least the performances of the National Peking Opera House in the Meilanfang Grand Theater and the Beijing Peking Opera House in the Chang'an Grand Theater are still continuing, but the performance advertisements of these two theaters have shifted from print media to online, of course, online ticket purchase is also very convenient, but after all, there is no place for performance advertisements on paper media. At that time, "Beijing Daily" only had four pages, but there were a small half of the pages to publish performance advertisements, and now the newspaper has a thick stack, but it does not allow the existence of literary and artistic performance advertisements?! It's really confusing.
Sun Yumin's memoirs mentioned the problem of advertising for performances. Sun Yumin was the principal of the Beijing Xiqu Vocational School at the time, and once she asked Ding Guangen, the director of the Central Propaganda Department, for instructions on how to solve the practical problems of student performances, and Minister Ding said that it is best to have a relatively fixed theater for student performances... Can the problem of newspaper advertising for performances be solved by sending messages? Then Qiang Wei, the propaganda director of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, said that he sent a message to the student performance and said that the student performance could be included in the series of weekend activities carried out in Beijing. From this recollection, it can be seen that the fact that newspapers no longer advertise performances is already irrevocable, and can only be replaced by "the way of sending messages". People can't help but ask, can today's newspapers really not tolerate Peking Opera advertisements? It must be known that publicizing national culture and revitalizing national opera is a major responsibility of newspapers!
The disappearance of opera advertisements in newspapers does not mean the disappearance of opera, of course, but can only show that the current literary and artistic performances are "templeized" and "aristocratic", and have been far away from ordinary people. Why should performances that do not require the public be widely publicized in the media!