The birth of the national opera "The White-Haired Girl"
Before the birth of national opera, the main form of new Chinese opera was drama. From 1943 to 1944, the Yang opera developed to the later stage, producing classic works such as "Brother and Sister Open the Land", "A Red Flower", "Zhou Zishan" and so on.
Although it is an excellent Yang opera work, the revolutionary literary and artistic workers in Yan'an have been dissatisfied with the existing achievements, and the Yang opera at this time has only stayed at a simple and single and increasingly formulaic level, and it is difficult to express the content and life of the masses at that time.
In 1944, Lin Man, a writer working in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, asked him to bring his novel "White-Haired Woman" published in 1942 to Zhou Yang of Yan'an's "Luyi".
The story of the "white-haired fairy aunt" was transmitted to "Lu Yi". The story of "white-haired fairy aunt" is the gist: a young girl in a mountain village in Hebei Province was forced to kill her father by a landlord in the name of selling her daughter to settle debts, robbed her daughter to enter the door as a servant, and fled into the mountains after several humiliations, and her hair turned white in life.
After the story was introduced to "Lu Yi", the courtyard thought that this was a good opera theme, which reflected the theme of "the old society forced people into ghosts, and the new society turned ghosts into people". In order to present a gift to the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he began to organize the creation of forces.
In August 1944, the script creation team of "The White-Haired Girl" was written by Shao Zinan, and the first draft was completed. Mark and Zhang Lu began to compose music for more than ten of them, and conducted the first rehearsal.
According to the experience of Qin opera in the past, the composition contains a lot of opera elements. According to Shu Qiang's recollection: "At first, the arrangement in the form of Qin cavity, the singing was Qin cavity, the musical accompaniment was also the tune and gong and drum beat of Qin cavity, and the actors' performances, walking footwork, movements, gestures and expressions were all in the form of opera. ”
But after the first rehearsal of the work, the effect was not satisfactory. The creation of this completely opera form does not conform to the new era, new life, and new ideas. It needs to be revised.
In January 1945, Zhang Geng reorganized the script team, written by He Jingzhi and Ding Yi (the last scene and later the revision of the whole play). The directors were Wang Dahua and Shu Qiang, and the music composition was composed by the original Marco and Zhang Lu, and Qu Wei, Xiang Yu and Li Huanzhi were added.
In terms of art form, this revision integrates the characteristics of drama, opera, and Western opera. The birth of the national opera "White-Haired Girl" has gone through several twists and turns, and it is the result of the collective creation of the Yan'an "Luyi" work group.
It has successfully explored the inheritance of traditional Chinese opera and the absorption of Western opera.
Yang Bailao borrows from the role of Chinese opera
In Chinese opera, each genre has its own division. According to Shu Qiang's recollection, at the beginning of the creation of the white-haired girl, a large number of Qin dialects were used to create, which included references to the opera industry.
Qin cavity, that is, random play, one of the types of opera. It comes from the Northwest folk song ditty, evolved from string tunes. It is endemic in Shaanxi and Gansu.
The profession of Qin cavity is divided into thirteen categories, such as four lives (old students, Xu Sheng, small students, and young students), six dan (old dan, zhengdan, small dan, huadan, medium dan, wudan), two jing (big jing, Mao jing), and one ugly.
In the national opera "White Haired Girl", according to the identity, age and personality of Yang Bailao's characters, it should belong to the "life" in the opera industry. Sheng, in the opera, mainly plays middle-aged and older men, generally positive characters, and its character characteristics: integrity, kindness, aging, perseverance, fortitude, steadiness.
According to the character's identity, age, and personality, it can be divided into a variety of specialties.
As China's first real opera, the national opera "White Haired Girl" is a success, and a successful national opera must have a strong dramatic conflict, which requires obvious character attribute division, such as: positive characters and negative characters.
This forms the inevitable conflict between the positive characters and the negative characters in the play, that is, the conflict between Yang Bailao and Huang Shiren.
This division of character attributes, from the perspective of appearance shaping, can refer to the earliest film and television materials.
Because the image data of the opera "White Haired Girl" premiered in Yan'an in 1945 has not been preserved, it can only be used as a reference from the external image of Yang Bailao, played by Zhang Shouwei, in the recent 1950 film "White Haired Girl".
Judging from Zhang Shouwei's role as Yang Bailao in the 1950 "White Haired Girl" movie, we refer to the role in Qin Wan, and the character Yang Bailao in the play is presented with character attributes such as "Xu Sheng".
In the performance of the 1958 Peking Opera "White Haired Girl", Li Shaochun even used the old students of the decrepit school to create the character of Yang Bailao, which is not only in line with Yang Bailao's identity age, but also in line with his tragic character.
Yang Bailao, who is shaped by the image of "Sheng", intuitively brings the audience an old, simple and kind image, and is a typical "Xu Sheng" character.
And the character Huang Shiren is presented as a character like "Joker". Bringing treacherous, miserly, and vile images to the audience, he is a typical "clown" character.
Yang Bailao's character traits and performance characteristics are in stark contrast to the villain Huang Shiren.
When opera performers break through the shackles of the genre of opera and recreate, a new character image is produced, and in this process, through creation, the way that belongs to the performance of opera characters is produced.
In this way, continuous breakthroughs and accumulation have enabled the image of Chinese opera characters to be innovated and improved.