With the sentence "come also", accompanied by the snowfall in the sky, Mr. Mei Lanfang grew a beard and slowly appeared...... On January 9th, the Chengdu City Concert Hall was full of melodious Beijing rhyme and thunderous applause, focusing on the feelings of the family and country of Mr. Mei Lanfang, a generation of Peking Opera masters, jointly produced by the Propaganda Department of the Taizhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and Jiangsu Performing Arts Group, produced by the Taizhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, and created and rehearsed by the Peking Opera Company of Jiangsu Performing Arts Group. The performance was packed, cheering and applauding.
"Mei Lanfang: The Story of the Beard" brings together the first-line creators in China, with the first-class screenwriter Luo Zhou as the screenwriter, the first-class director Xu Chunlan as the director, the first-class composer Xie Zhenqiang as the singing design, and the first-level composer Wu Xiaoping as the composer.
In 2019, the play premiered at the opening ceremony of the China (Taizhou) Mei Lanfang Art Festival, and was selected as the 2019 Jiangsu Stage Art Creation Support Project Support Repertoire, Jiangsu Art Fund 2020 Communication and Promotion Funding Project, National Arts Fund 2023 Communication and Promotion Funding Project, and won the 12th Jiangsu Province Spiritual Civilization Construction "Five One Project" Outstanding Works Award. Over the past four years, the play has undergone continuous polishing and processing, and has also undertaken the important task of cultivating and training outstanding Peking Opera talents. Nowadays, all the roles are played by outstanding young actors in the hospital, and Li Yanmao, a high-school veteran, plays Mei Lanfang, and performs together with Zhang Zhibo, Ma Yuyun, Zhang Shaoliang, Wan Pengfei, Dong Jing, etc., showing the vigorous vitality of young actors.
On the stage, the plot progresses layer by layer, with string songs as the pen and performance as the ink. In the euphemistic and beautiful singing and ethereal and profound choreography, Mr. Mei Lanfang's arrogance and patriotism stirred the hearts of the audience. In the face of the Japanese military's request to force Mei Lanfang to participate in the celebration performance, he first refused the ticket to return to Shanghai, and then took three injections of typhoid fever in a row, causing high fever and self-harm, and refused to perform on stage. This is no less than wasting time for a person who regards the stage as the whole of life. But for the sake of the national righteousness, no matter how much he wants to "shoot the color and shoot the red appliqué, the warbler cries and the goose cries with the huqin", Mr. Mei also resolutely adheres to the belief of "no song if you don't see spring". Li Yanmao, the actor of Mei Lanfang, said: "In the play, Master Mei always makes choices and thinks in a state of suppressed grief and anger. After many performances, I was able to go deeper into Master Mei's heart, more in line with his personality and temperament, and externalize his inner struggles and sufferings, so that the audience could understand the difficult choices made by Mr. Mei under the circumstances. ”
At the performance site, the audience was impressed by Mr. Mei Lanfang's integrity, sometimes silently meditating, sometimes applauding, sometimes crying emotionally, and sighed: "I admire Master Mei very much, I am very moved!" "After watching it, I feel that my ideological realm has been improved." "I hope this drama can be performed more often!" After the performance, the audience was still reluctant to leave the venue for a long time, and under the shout of "one more", Li Yanmao returned to perform an excerpt from "Cutting the Yellow Robe".
In October last year, the play toured Chengdu. At the beginning of the new year of 2024, he returned to Chengdu and participated in the China Peking Opera Festival, the largest and highest-level Peking Opera art event in mainland China, and was reviewed by audiences and experts. Jiangsu Performing Arts Group Peking Opera Company has attached great importance to it since receiving the news of the selection, and all the cast and crew have worked together and gone all out, and the actors have been meticulously crafted in every word, every tone, and every move, and constantly standardized the details of the performance, and finally presented this performance with great artistic appeal and appeal of the times, and also showed the high-spirited spirit and strong comprehensive strength of the Peking Opera Company of Jiangsu Performing Arts Group.
Tonight, the play will be staged again at the Chengdu City Concert Hall. Tomorrow, he will also participate in the "One Opera, One Commentary" seminar of this year's China Peking Opera Art Festival and accept the comments of the participating experts.
Proofread by Faye Wong