Peking Opera "Double Bells", also known as "Ma Siyuan", is composed of "Haihui Temple" and "Ma Siyuan", which used to be performed in two days. This situation has only changed since the mid-twenties of the last century.
【Plot Brief】The drama "Ma Siyuan" is a real event that happened in Beijing at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The play tells that Wang Longjiang works as a kitchen assistant at the Ma Siyuan restaurant in Beijing and returns home in three sessions. His wife Zhao Yu was unwilling to be lonely, wandered around Haihui Temple, and met Jia Ming, who sold velvet thread, and fornicated by ridicule. At the end of the year, Wang Longjiang returned home from Beijing, drunk and drunk halfway, met his old friend Gan Ziqian, and borrowed money from him, but Wang refused.
Seeing that his bags were heavy, Gan followed him home, intending to steal by night. Seeing her husband's return, Zhao Yu urgently asked Jia Ming to hide in the tank. Riding on the drunken lying king, he actually chopped the king to death with a kitchen knife and buried the body; Gan Ziqian fled. Zhao Yu feared that Wang would not return to the restaurant for a long time, aroused people's suspicions, but went to Beijing to ask Ma Siyuan for people, and because of a verbal quarrel, he falsely accused Ma of killing his husband, and the official became a lawsuit.
The interrogator could not understand, and went to the imperial history of the patrol city, and when Gan Ziqian was detained for committing a crime, he told what he had witnessed, and the hall official arrested Jia Ming, severely interrogated Zhao Yu, and Ma Siyuan was wronged.
Shinosuihua
In the old days, actors acted every day, but they all acted in folding plays, which lasted about four quarters of an hour, rather than cost dramas, such as the old Dan drama "Fishing for Golden Turtles", "Road Training" and "Crying Spirit", which were performed in three days, not in one day; For example, "Lost Street Pavilion" is often performed until the "empty city plan", the name is "Lost Street Pavilion", if it is followed by "Lost Street Pavilion", it is marked like this: ""Lost Street Pavilion" with Horse Chopping".
"Ma Siyuan" can be said to be the first drama of the Xiao School, although Xiao Cuihua is clumsy in singing, but in this play, he wins with endless eyes, stomping, watching, and chanting, making people feel the hearty charm of Peking Opera art.
However, Xiao Cuihua's unique work in this play is not only that, the most absolute is that he uses these thousands of hard kung fu to paint the image of a "female bazi" in the Qing Dynasty, which is unforgettable and impressive.
Wang Yaoqing
Following Wang Yaoqing's opening up the direction of integrating the performance programs of Tsing Yi, Hua Dan and Dao Ma Dan, Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu and Xun Huisheng "four famous dans" finally completed and enriched this performance system named "Hua Shirt".
At the same time as the four famous dan, the famous actors who acted in Hua Dan opera were basically only Xiao Cuihua and Xiao Guihua, but only Xiao Cuihua was able to compete with the "Four Famous Dan", and in the eyes of theater fans and industry insiders, his artistic level and status were not weaker than the "Four Great Famous Dan".
Xiao Cuihua has two places that are beyond the reach of the "Four Famous Dans", one is that he has a good play when he is sitting in the department, such as the play "Sitting on the Building to Kill", which was quite noticeable when he was acting in Fulian Cheng Class, at that time, it was Ma Lianliang who played Song Jiang. According to available information, since Shinosui Hanamanko left Fu Liancheng, Ma Lianliang has not acted in this play in Fusha's performance.
The second is that the flowers are red in Corey, and they are even more red after leaving the family. In the second year of going out to take the class, the drama is in the finale position; In his first performance in Shanghai, he also performed a big shaft play. Since then, no matter whether it is north or south, the people who cooperate with it are famous or excellent old students, harlequins and Danjiao actors at that time. For example, his "Sitting on the Building to Kill" has collaborated with all the famous old students at that time, and his "Fan Jiangguan" has collaborated with all the famous Tsing Yi Hua Dan actors at that time.
The name of the little osmanthus is Binhui, the character Yanfen, and the nickname is two grids. He entered the Bin Qing Society at an early age to study art, ranked Bin Hui, and worked on Peking Opera Hua Dan. His lover is Kun Sheng, who was born in Kuiguan, and he is also the brother-in-law of Xiao Cuihua. His performances include "Qinhuai River", "Little Cow Herding", "Playing Flower Drum", "Red Luanxi", "Chatou Pass" and "Zhan Wancheng".
Xiao Guihua mostly performs pre-scenes in various drama classes, but we can't completely use the position of an actor as a standard to speculate on his acting level. Actors who sing in the front position are not necessarily low-level. For example, when Li Duokui took Cheng Yanqiu's Minghe Club, he sang in the front position, so much so that Li Duokui once said when recalling this singing career: I often sang to the chair at that time.
Xiao Cuihua has many stunts in the play "Ma Siyuan", one of which can now be said to be unprecedented and unprecedented, that is, in the lobby of the Criminal Department, when Zhao Yuer was tortured, he was able to let the audience see the change of face from red to purple to blue from his face smeared with oil paint, and this is not yet the second person can do.
Probably because this play has Zhao Yuer's performance of laughing with Jia Ming, which is accused of being yellow, and is described as a "blood powder play" because it involves adulterous killings, and this play has been banned many times in history. But Shinocuihua has always been unhappy, and he even made a disbelief in the fifties of the last century: Let me perform for everyone to see, is there yellow?
I naturally have no eyes to see this play, so I can't express a specific opinion on this issue, but I once thought about it: An actor with the prestige of Shinosuihua, with so many superb skills, would he sacrifice his reputation and attract audiences with erotic performances?
The play was repeatedly banned, but it was widely welcomed by the audience. In 1957, Shinosuihua performed the play, and it is said that the audience at the ministerial level at that time was even greater than the number of people attending the government council. I think this can negate the suspicion that Shinosui has a pornographic performance in the play!
However, what Xiao Cuihua did not expect was that the performance during this period led to the complete end of his stage career, and he has not set foot on the stage since then.
The misfortune of Shinosuihana has the reasons of the times, but there are also personal factors, so I will not discuss them here. However, Shinosuihua is also lucky, although his play is banned, his art has been affirmed. Since then, he has been mainly teaching, and there were really many disciples and students at that time, but none of them had an ideal inheritor, which is a pity.
At that time, the Art Research Institute also specially sent people to record the performing arts of several plays of Xiao Cuihua's "Picking Jade Bracelet" and "Sitting on the Building to Kill", and published a monograph "Hua Dan Performing Art", you know, at that time, the recording of Cheng Yanqiu's performing arts was not on the agenda! Cheng Yanqiu may not be anxious and sullen.
When answering her son Yu Shiwen's question about the lineage of the Xiao school, Xiao Cuihua said sentimentally: The Xiao school has no descendants.
Writing this, I suddenly had a little feeling, so here is a brief note as follows:
Although the Shinomi school was lost prematurely, in fact, which school has a successor who can inherit and carry forward the mantle of its master and ancestors? Today's Peking Opera has lost its soul of performing arts.
And look at the actors who are now sixty years old and down, which one is not the master of the old drama, and the new drama listens to the director? Even if some actors have starred in several new plays and played a few new roles, which new show has been welcomed by audiences and not just by experts and industry insiders? What new character is something you will talk about?
When an actor strives to become a copyist (and today's young actors can't even do a good copyer), becomes a creative tool for directors, and loses his most dynamic stage creativity, can his performance still be attractive? How can the play be good?
Now back to the point of view, Peking Opera performing art is the physical art of actors, and people's artistic death is an objective law, which cannot be intervened by manpower, so we do not need to sigh at the faintness of some genre arts.
Imagine if some of the apprentices and grandchildren of these predecessors of Peking Opera masters and later scholars could achieve "the blue is better than the blue" like their masters and ancestors, would today's Peking Opera audiences still be "thick and thin"? Will there still be a crisis in the art of Peking Opera that is now intensifying? The answer is self-explanatory.
This concludes this article due to space constraints. What wonderful performing arts Xiao Cuihua has in the play "Ma Siyuan" will be introduced in detail in a separate article, and then Jingxi teachers and friends will appreciate the light and read.