"The White-Haired Girl" is a well-known character and story in China, which is famous for its opera and brilliant again with its ballet.
In fact, it is also the first repertoire of New China to go abroad and have a wide international impact, and it has really won the applause of the international community, and even heartfelt appreciation, and it is the first good voice of China to really appear on the world stage.
图 | 歌剧《白毛女》，王昆主演
Popular all over the country
In January 1945, He Jingzhi had just turned 22 years old before he finished writing "Nanniwan" and wrote "The White-Haired Girl".
The crew is an assembly line operation, He Jingzhi finished writing a scene, the composer composed the music, and then engraved on wax paper, which was reviewed and approved by Zhang Geng, director of the opera department, and then rehearsed by directors Wang Bin, Shu Qiang and actors Wang Kun, Chen Qiang, Tian Hua, Zhang Shouwei, etc.
The spring is cold, everyone is basking in the sun in the yard, rehearsing on the other side, and the surroundings are full of people, including teachers and students of Lu Yi, cooks, and fellow villagers in Qiaoergou.
While watching, everyone commented and spoke freely.
From the theme, the content, the characterization, the treatment, to what language is used: Mandarin or dialect, and what music is used: orchestration or composition?
Whenever they encountered a place that did not conform to the details of rural life, the villagers of Qiaoergou put it forward, and many suggestions were absorbed.
On April 28, 1945, the opera "The White-Haired Girl" premiered in the auditorium of Yan'an Party School.
Because of the tight supply of tickets, General Chen Geng and Chen Xilian sat on the windowsill to watch the performance.
In the first three scenes, some female comrades in the back row cried, and Li Fuchun turned around and said: "Comrades, what are you doing here? This is acting!"
In the last scene of the performance, when Xi'er returned to the village to reunite with the villagers, the audience burst into tears and thunderous applause.
"The White-Haired Girl" has been performed more than 30 times in Yan'an, and each performance is full of empty alleys, helping the old and the young, and the walls, roofs, branches, and haystacks are full of people......
After that, "The White-Haired Girl" quickly became popular throughout the liberated areas and went to the whole of China.
The power that this play inspires back then was something that even its creators had not anticipated.
It was originally based on a folk tale in the Jin-Cha-Ji Liberated Area: a tenant farmer owed a debt to the landlord, and was unable to repay it due to the rolling profits, so he had to use his daughter to pay off the debt. The girl could not bear the humiliation of the landlord, and fled to live in the mountains alone for many years, due to the lack of sunlight and salt, the hair on her whole body turned white. She stole the fruits in the temple late at night for food, and was called "white-haired fairy girl" by unknown villagers......
Many modern people may not understand that in old China, landlords borrowed money at an interest rate of 30%, oil at 80%, and salt at 150%...... For generations, many peasants have been indebted to the landlords from birth to death; in the face of famine, they have sold their sons and daughters, and have been enslaved and humiliated, without the slightest dignity or status.
"The White-Haired Girl" contains profound people's nature and reality, accurately grasps the social reality and contradictions at that time, and combines romanticism, artistic beauty and fighting spirit through characters and events full of dramatic tension, and becomes a landmark work at the beginning of new literature and art in a way that the masses like to see, and is an epoch-making milestone work.
The front-line soldiers attacked Jinzhou after watching the play
During the three-year War of Liberation, all units took the crew of "The White-Haired Girl" with the army, and wherever the People's Liberation Army fought, "The White-Haired Girl" would be performed, and wherever it went, it would set off a big tide, which was what people called the "White-Haired Girl" storm.
General Yang Dezhi once said: "During the three-year Liberation War, the average number of performances of "The White-Haired Girl" was about 500 per year. ”
In the northeast, before launching a general attack on Jinzhou, the front-line soldiers watched the performance of "The White-Haired Girl", "It was like pouring a scoop of oil on the fire, and a slogan of 'Down with Huang Shiren! ”
moved the officers and soldiers of the uprising
In 1948, the Liaoxi Art Troupe performed "The White-Haired Girl", and more than 500 rebel officers and soldiers of the cruiser "Chongqing" entered to watch it, and they all shed tears after watching it. Captain Deng Zhaoxiang said: "After watching your performance, I am determined to go with the Communist Party!"
When the Kuomintang planes came to bomb the "Chongqing", Captain Deng commanded the soldiers to fight desperately with the enemy planes until all the shells were exhausted.
Chen Qiang was almost beaten to death by the audience
Chen Qiang played the landlord Huang Shiren too similarly, or He Jingzhi portrayed Huang Shiren very well, and Chen Qiang suffered a lot of crimes.
When "The White-Haired Girl" premiered, Huang Shiren was not shot at the end.
However, many masses and fighters were very dissatisfied with this.
Lu Yi had a cook, and angrily slammed the knife on the chopping board: Why don't you shoot Huang Shiren? If you don't shoot him, I'm not convinced!
After the premiere, the chief went backstage to visit the actors and shook hands with everyone one by one, but when he walked in front of Chen Qiang, he frowned tightly, and even jumped over him directly and shook hands with the latter actor.
Later, after a collective discussion: Huang Shiren's crime is extremely heinous and should be shot!
"The White-Haired Girl" toured in the liberated areas, and the landlord did not give Chen Qiang food from time to time.
On the Huailai tour in Zhangjiakou, when Huang Shiren pulled Xi'er to pay off his debts, half of the bricks, stones, dirt, and fruits rained down on the stage, and one of the stones hit Chen Qiang's left eye, injuring him.
In the winter of 1946, during the performance of "The White-Haired Girl" in the river, a soldier suddenly stood up and pointed his gun at "Huang Shiren", but fortunately, the platoon commander next to him blocked it with his arm and saved Chen Qiang's life.
From then on, the army stipulated that when watching "The White-Haired Girl" again, the guns must be unarmed.
Various art forms of "The White-Haired Girl" emerge in endlessly
In 1951, the Northeast Film Studio filmed the feature film "The White-Haired Girl", after the film was released, it was screened for a long time, with the largest number of audiences in Shanghai reaching more than 478,000 people a day, and by 1956, the national audience had reached hundreds of millions of people, which was one of the films with the largest audience at that time.
Figure | In the movie "The White-Haired Girl", Tian Hua plays Xi'er and Chen Qiang plays Huang Shiren
In 1965, the large-scale ballet "The White-Haired Girl" was launched, which perfectly combined Western ballet art and Chinese folk dance, realized the collision, integration, innovation and sublimation of Eastern and Western arts, and became an eternal memory in the hearts of a generation.
图 | 芭蕾舞剧《白毛女》
In the 60s, Xi'er's actor Guo Lanying brought the opera to the peak, among which "The North Wind Blows", "Tie the Red Head Rope", "Xi'er Crying Dad" and other singing segments have become well-known classics. Her singing and acting skills are definitely comparable to many world-class theatrical sopranos.
Figure | People's artist Guo Lanying plays the white-haired girl
The white-haired girl is not only famous for operas, ballets, and movies, but also rehearses for various local plays.
The first "White-Haired Girl" in the drama industry was actually Zhao Lirong, a sketch actor who was later loved by people.
In addition, there are Cantonese opera, Shanghai opera, Yue opera, Qin dialect, drum ci, Xihe drum, long Muyushu, Sichuan opera, Xin Chu opera, Chaozhou songbook and so on, among which there are three different versions of drum lyrics alone.
Worldwide
"The White-Haired Girl" walked out of the liberated areas very early, went abroad, and went to all over the world.
Performed in Hong Kong in 1948
In May 1948, with the support of the Hong Kong Cultural Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China, "The White-Haired Girl" was jointly performed in Hong Kong by the Central Plains Drama Art Society and the New Music Society.
At that time, the whole country had not yet been liberated, but the performance was still unprecedented, and it was called "a monumental event that caused a sensation in the upper and lower classes of Hong Kong and Kowloon society", and the newspapers published a large number of letters from the audience, and the response was extremely strong.
The crowd queuing up to buy tickets surrounded the front of the Kowloon Puqing Grand Theater. Some even came from Thailand, Singapore and other places. In order to buy a theater ticket, many people also took their luggage and queued up at the entrance of the theater for the night.
The performance of "The White-Haired Girl" aroused the strong expectations of the Hong Kong people for the new China, provided public opinion guidance and support for the legitimacy of the Chinese revolution, and also became a medium for the Western world to understand the real China.
The fly in the ointment is that the landlord Huang Shiren played by Lan Gu seems a little gentle and elegant, and does not show the ugliness of the landlord completely like Chen Qiang, so that it has triggered a big debate of "Should Huang Shiren be killed?"
Eastern European tour
In 1951, the opera "The White-Haired Girl" was performed in 9 countries including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the GDR in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as Vienna, Austria, touring 152 cities, performing 437 times, with an audience of more than 2.42 million people.
An old Austrian lady, wherever "The White-Haired Girl" goes, she sees it, and it doesn't fall.
At the end of the performance in Vienna, the capital of music, someone gave flowers to "Huang Shiren" according to the custom, and the audience shouted: Don't give it to him!
After the film "The White-Haired Girl" was staged in cinemas and squares in Eastern Europe, it received rave reviews. In July 1951, The White-Haired Girl received the first Special Honor Award at the 6th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe also translated and published the play of "The White-Haired Girl" and put it on the stage.
Figure | The script for The White-Haired Girl in Spanish, French, Hungarian, and Polish
Xi'er actor Wang Kun recalled that in the Jiewen drama "The White-Haired Girl", Yang Bailao went to Huang Shiren's house and first took off his coat and hung it on the hanger. "The Czech director asked me for my opinion, and I said, this is not good, there is no such thing. He said, 'He is wearing torn clothes!' and besides, it is snowing so hard outside, how can he not take off his coat when he enters the house?' I said, 'The landlords of the mainland will not let the poor tenants do this, and besides, it is impossible for the tenant to wear a coat outside, he only has a thin cotton jacket, and there is one garment both indoors and outdoors.' In this way, the Czech director deepened his understanding of the Chinese revolution.
Rooted in Japan
Among the countries of the world, "The White-Haired Girl" has had the greatest and most lasting impact in Japan.
In 1952, the Japan-China Friendship Association held "White-Haired Girl" screenings throughout Japan, with an audience of 2 million.
Matsuyama Ballet's director Masao Shimizu and his wife Shuko Matsuyama accidentally watched the film in tears in a small hall in Koto District, and then followed "The White-Haired Girl" all the way, covering almost all the screening points.
The dramatic effect of Xi'er's hair turning from black to white overnight inspired them to create a ballet, and the two decided to adapt "The White-Haired Girl" into a ballet.
In February 1955, when the dance drama "The White-Haired Girl" was premiered in Japan, Shimizu recalled: "The weather was very cold, but the audience was so crowded that there were no standing tickets. ”
Shuko Matsuyama recalled, "At the curtain call, the audience applauded for a long time. The audience in the front row burst into tears, and some even cried loudly. The actors on the stage couldn't hold back their emotions, and everyone took a curtain call with tears in their eyes. ”
Since then, Matsuyama Ballet has performed in China 12 times. Everywhere I went, I was greeted with great repercussions and hospitality. Qing Shui recalled that at the banquet in Chongqing, there were actresses who calculated that there were 48 dishes, which were constantly served.
Figure | Stills from Songshan Ballet's performance of "The White-Haired Girl".
Access to Europe and the United States
When the movie "The White-Haired Girl" was released in France, it was full.
The French media commented: ""The White-Haired Girl" is the first Chinese film with a modern theme to be released in Paris. It allows the French audience to see a very great, lyrical and beautiful Oriental masterpiece that can be ranked among the top ten business cards in the world. ”
In April 1977, the ballet "The White-Haired Girl" was performed in France with great success.
AFP reported that "the whole of Paris applauded". The local media praised the artistic attainments of the dance drama: solemn, delicate and dreamlike.
According to the French newspaper "Aurora", its performance is impeccable in the most fascinating way, combining the beautiful dance postures of the East and the techniques of Western classical ballet.
In the same year, Shanghai Ballet visited Canada to perform in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, setting off a whirlwind of "The White-Haired Girl".
Canada's Minister of Culture lamented: "I thought it was full of gunsmoke, but it was completely unexpected. It amazes us to see your actors and actresses with their graceful movements, light dance steps, and full of romance. ”
The American media has also paid attention to the phenomenon of "The White-Haired Girl". The New York Times commented: "The White-Haired Girl" contains cultural codes such as oriental, mysterious, love, revenge, red, and revolution, which is the reason why it became popular in the world.
The past is the foundation of the future
It is no exaggeration to say that "The White-Haired Girl" has created a miracle in the history of literature and art in China and even the world.
How to inherit the artistic charm of "The White-Haired Girl" is also worth pondering.
图 | 新版歌剧《白毛女》剧照
The splendid and magnificent Chinese culture has provided a steady stream of cultural creativity for future generations. The success of "The White-Haired Girl" shows that the excavation and innovation of themes with Chinese cultural genes and Chinese elements can better tell Chinese stories and show the charm of Chinese culture.