This past weekend, the Shanghai Opera House's original national opera "March of the Volunteers" premiered at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. This opera tells the story of the dream-chasing youth under the leadership of the Communist Party of China a hundred years ago, carrying out the left-wing cultural movement, setting up a film group, imagining the new China in the "world of light and shadow", and this group of "new youth" led by Tian Han, Nie Er, and Xia Yan created the movie "Children of the Storm" and its theme song "March of the Volunteers" in Shanghai. Xu Zhong, director and conductor of the Shanghai Opera House, said: "The opera "March of the Volunteers" is an original masterpiece created by contemporary like-minded artists to pursue their dreams and create for the people. ”
Shanghai is a red city that has nurtured the great spirit of the founding of the party, and it is the cultural mission of local creators to continue the red blood. Looking back at Shanghai's literary and artistic creation in 2023, from literature to the stage, different forms of works have the same goal, strengthening the mainstream value in the cultural convergence and integration, inheriting the red cultural context, and creating a Shanghai sample of cultural self-confidence and self-improvement.
Record the "red footprint" with heart and affection
Ma Wenyun, secretary of the leading party group of the Shanghai Writers Association, revealed in an interview with this newspaper that Shanghai's literary activities and key creations focus on serving the overall situation, and in order to undertake the mission of concentrating on the soul and forging souls, it continues to organize and carry out documentary literary creations such as "Red Starting Point" and "Red Footprint". At present, the "Red Starting Point" series has launched 15 works with a total of about 2 million words, and "The Red Torch Burning in the Heart of the Enemy - The Underground Party in the Old Shanghai Police" and "Qiming" were newly published during the year, and "Innocence in the World - The First Central Supervision Commission "Four Martyrs of Longhua" was newly completed.
Among them, "The Red Torch Burning in the Heart of the Enemy - The Underground Party in the Old Shanghai Police" focuses on the "special police" on the hidden front: in 1931, an underground branch of the CCP was established in the patrol house on Jiaxing Road in the public concession, which was the first CCP organization established in the Shanghai police system. By May 1949, the number of underground CCP members in the Shanghai police system had grown to about 500. At that time, there were about 8,000 underground party members in Shanghai, and nearly 6.25% of the underground party members in the police system. "The Red Torch Burning in the Heart of the Enemy - The Underground Party in the Old Shanghai Police" tells the story of the underground members of the Communist Party of China in the Shanghai police system before the liberation of Shanghai, how they were like a sharp knife into the heart of the enemy, steadily and steadily, accumulating strength, not only skillfully and forcefully striking at the enemy, but also effectively cooperating with and supporting the mass movement.
In addition, Liu Tong's "Turning Point: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Northern Shaanxi in 1947" is also a key publication project in Shanghai this year. This non-fiction literary work by Liu Tong refers to a large number of historical documents, combat reports, diaries and memoirs of the parties concerned, the latest research results on the hidden front, and historical materials on the Kuomintang side, and includes nearly 100 historical photographs and battlefield situation maps. Liu Tong practiced the academic ideal of "facts are based on evidence, and words are justified", and while collecting historical archives, he also made two field visits along the route of Mao Zedong and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to fight in northern Shaanxi, inspected the battlefields, garrisons, terrain and natural environment of northern Shaanxi, and vividly put this history into writing.
Promote red culture in a broader dimension
As Kan Ninghui, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and President of Shanghai Century Publishing Group, said: "After the incubation and transformation of literary masterpieces, they have become new literary and artistic products close to the people, full of fireworks and positive energy, reflecting the cultural height and humanistic temperature of Shanghai, a people's city." "Red literary and artistic works will not only break the circle, but also become a phenomenon-level hot spot, so that red culture can spread in a broader dimension.
Mao Dun Literature Award-winning work "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" has become a hot IP in the literary market: the novella of the same name premiered on the Tianchan Yifu stage, and the radio drama of the same name was selected in the atrium of the post office building to hold an open-air reading meeting.
The phenomenal dance drama "The Eternal Wave" has been performed nearly 600 times in 50 cities and 67 theaters in China. This year, the Shanghai Song and Dance Troupe explored the "two-way feeding" model between theaters and cinemas to further stimulate the vitality of "radio wave" IP.
Fang Jiajun, a literary critic, said: "The creation of red themes by Shanghai literary and art workers is constantly exploring the laws of art, and the comprehensive consideration of social impact and market benefits is becoming more and more mature. The creator's current choice of red themes is consistent with the temperament of this art category, and the pursuit is more conducive to the play of artistic characteristics and advantages, so that the creation of the main theme is closer to the hearts of the people. ”
The original Huai Opera "Tinder" created and rehearsed by the Shanghai Huai Opera Troupe is based on the three armed uprisings of workers in Shanghai between 1926 and 1927, and tells the story of the workers at the bottom of the industry. The main creative team is bold and innovative, combined with the characteristic expression of the theme of the labor movement, and integrates opera and musical techniques in the Huai Opera group opera. The text of "Tinder" is "down-to-earth", the music is sung in a fast and slow, strong and weak manner, relaxed and orderly, and the melody conforms to the emotions and personality characteristics of the characters, which is neither stale nor loses the musical characteristics of this play. The body design integrates the characteristics of dance and traditional Huai Opera, seeking the combination of opera performance and dance drama.
The acrobatic drama "Tianshan Snow" lasted three years to polish and appeared at this year's China Shanghai International Arts Festival. The story of the acrobats connects the magnificent history of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang in the past 70 years of jointly building and developing Xinjiang, and tells the story of the people of all ethnic groups working together to forge ahead in three dimensions with acrobatic terminology. In order to truly depict the beautiful picture scroll of Shanghai and Xinjiang, the main creator fully integrates technical performance, dance and character building, reflecting the complementarity of drama and acrobatics. In the past, acrobatic art performances that were known for their skills were combined with lyrical expression and expression, and the improvement and breakthrough from acrobatics to acrobatic drama were completed. Last month, a crew of 140 people traveled more than 5,500 kilometers to Kashgar, Xinjiang, to carry out a cultural tour of Xinjiang, and the "Tianshan Eagle" returned to its hometown in the warm applause of the villagers.
The creation of the red theme bursts with new vitality
The stage play "Awakening Age" and the drama "Heroic Children" produced by Shanghai went to Beijing this summer, and the adjectives "youth, innovation, and romance" frequently appeared in the comments of Beijing experts, which is precisely the key word of Shanghai's red-themed creation.
The drama "Children of Heroes" and the stage play "The Age of Awakening" set off a red wave at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing this summer. At the premiere of "Heroes' Children" in Beijing, the volunteers on the stage shouted "For victory, shoot at me", and the post-00s audience applauded warmly: "Heroes have come to us again!" Hu Yifeng, deputy director of the Theoretical Research Office of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, praised this work, believing that the main creative team in Shanghai has achieved "revolutionary literature and art that deeply fit the current cultural fashion and aesthetic taste, and through the delicate performance of many reunions on the Korean battlefield, it has effectively promoted the audience's emotions to reach the peak with the fate of the characters." "The country cannot be without youth for a day, and young people cannot go a day without awakening. During the performance of "The Awakening Age", the audience had a dialogue with the young people on the stage a hundred years ago, and their hearts were ignited again and again. Jin Wentai, deputy editor-in-chief of the editorial department of "Chinese Drama", bluntly said that "The Awakening Age" is a good drama with a "movie texture", and it should be more face-to-face with college students, so that young people can feel the light of faith more intuitively.
Shanghai's red history is thick, and the unremitting and enterprising theme creation, in line with the pulse of the times, bursts out with new expression and vitality.