In the opera "The White-Haired Girl", the emotional processing of Yang Bailao's baritone character is very important.
Emotional processing runs through every stage of the singing section, and Yang Bailao's different emotions and inner worlds run through the whole song.
The musical structure of Yang Bailao's singing section is divided into four parts, each of which expresses a different musical mood, and is transformed through the tonality to reflect the fluctuations and changes of emotions.
Yang Bailao's singing section reflects the complexity of the song through the conversion of two ethnic tones, and also highlights the image of Yang Bailao, a painful and helpless old peasant.
The first part of the song adopts the bA seven-tone mode with five flats, the melody is relatively gentle, there is no big jump between the various musical levels, the progression is dominant, and the ups and downs are not large.
The five measures of the A1 section are the variations and repetitions of the melody of the first four measures, reflecting the hardships that Yang Bailao endured during his time in hiding in the tent.
He showed the state of "powerlessness", paying attention to adjusting and controlling the breath, and adding that tone of helplessness and fatigue to show the old man's feeling of weakness.
The second section is still in the seven-tone mode of five flats, and because of the request for Xi'er's top rent, it is used through multiple triplets, and in a coherent and mellow way, avoiding the rush of breath.
In the lyrics of "I only have this one woman in my life, I can't live without my happy son", the mourning is integrated into it, reflecting the development trend from strong to weak, controlling the breath and intensity, and maintaining the coherence and place of the singing.
In the third measure, there are two legato words of "Xi'er" and "Xi'er", in order to highlight Yang Bailao's mood entering a higher state.
The last note of the third legato is a temporarily raised accompaniment 5, thus forming a descending chromatic scale from 6 to s5 to 5, which vividly embodies Yang Bailao's mournful muttering.
When Yang Bailao returned from the Huang family, he didn't know how to face Xi'er's feelings of pain, guilt and helplessness through a "deep" singing method, adding an appropriate crying tone, and integrating his vocal characteristics as a baritone into it, singing softly, deeply and lowly, making the emotional expression richer and fuller.
The third section adopts the SC six-tone quotient mode with five sharp signs, which can be used as a variation of the first singing section to reproduce the resemblance of the form.
However, compared with the first singing section, it also shows warmth, softness, love, and affinity, coupled with the "deep" singing prompt, which depicts Yang Bailao's cordial and excited emotions when he sees Xi'er asleep.
Paragraph C1 is a continuation and expansion of paragraph C. Yang Bailao clearly knew that this state of peace of mind no longer existed after Xi'er woke up, and he was even more self-blaming and sad, and he was helpless, and he could no longer suppress his excitement.
The fourth section once again changes the tonality of the singing section to the bE seven-tone quotient key with the same five flats, and the musical scene and mood have changed dramatically again.
The composer designed the D section to be sung in a "plain" style, with the aim of allowing Yang Bailao to have a face-to-face confrontation with the feudal forces of the old society, such as the county magistrate and the rich man.
Yang Bailao felt hopeless and pessimistic about the future and the future, and entered the E section of the singing section, and returned to a slow speed in a desperate state, and in terms of strength, he could appropriately strengthen and highlight the "scrape", "float", "go", "escape", "have, and" strips, because these words also bear important emotional sustenance.
In the fifth measure, there is a strong note mark F, and there is a crescendo velocity mark, and there is a high-pitched B3 of the second group of small characters with a free extension mark, which corresponds to the lyrics "Yes", which is also the last high note of the whole piece, followed by two words without pitch "My", this series of musical skills, singing skills and performance skills are highly concentrated, strongly highlighting and expressing Yang Bailao's desperate psychological state.
As a typical representative of Chinese national opera, the opera "The White-Haired Girl" is different from Western opera, and its biggest feature is that it has high requirements for the actors' performance skills, requires high-level theatrical performance components, and shows the character image through large lines and flexible body performance with singing.
For the opera performance of Yang Bailao, not only does the actor need to have the ability to sing in baritone and have a good grasp of the singing style, but also need a high degree of dramatic performance ability to master what kind of tone, intonation and voice to express a large number of lines and 1/3 of the whole play.
Therefore, Yang Bailao's theatrical performance requires clear characters, actions, perception of the theme and ideas, and discovery of the highest conflict.
It is clear that the foundation of the dramatic art of character action is the action of the characters, and the development of the plot of opera needs to be composed of and promoted by the actions of the characters.
Therefore, Yang Bailao's character builder needs to clarify what actions he plays in the role, clarify the basis of character building, and grasp the drama performance through the character action.
Each character has a corresponding task in the opera, and the action of the character is the basis for the completion of the task and purpose. Character action includes two aspects: external physical action and mental activity.
Yang Bailao's theatrical performance requires the performers to show the characters through perceptual creation on the basis of rational and full understanding of the characters' actions.
The action line of Yang Bailao's character creation has distinctive characteristics, and it is also a key clue to promote the development of the plot of the opera "The White-Haired Girl": going out to hide for seven days - going home to celebrate the New Year with his daughter - being forced by Huang Shiren to press his daughter's contract of sale - saying goodbye to his daughter and drinking brine to end her life.
Performers need to be clear about this line of action, and integrate emotion and psychology into each action process, taking an active attitude rather than completing every action and plot mechanically.
The highest conflict of the drama is also the most important thing to promote the development of the whole opera to the climax, show the theme and ideas, and shape the characters.
Both the factual and psychological basis of the opera singer's creation should be the highest conflict of the drama, which promotes the development of the characters' actions and is also the highest task pursued by the drama.
The highest conflict in the drama of Yang Bailao's performance image in "The White-Haired Girl" is reflected in the fact that society forces him to perish.
This supreme conflict shows Yang Bailao's sharp conflict and contradictory psychological state of the characters, and the choice to drink brine to end his life is despair and helplessness for society.
As the first generation of "Yang Bailao" Zhang Shouwei said: "Yang Bailao did not take Xi'er to flee, but he was worse than the refugees, and was forced to commit suicide by the landlord Huang Shiren." ”