The "Peach Blossom Fan" "One Play, Two Looks" staged by the Kunqu Opera Theater of Jiangsu Province in Beijing recently has a strong lineup and superb performances, which not only allows us to see the brilliance of this Chinese classical four famous dramas reappearing on the stage, but also allows people to see that over the past 30 years, several generations of artists have sorted out and excavated and carefully polished this "peerless" work in terms of performance form and performance content.
"One Play and Two Looks" "Peach Blossom Fan" is divided into two major plays, "Whole Book" and "Selected Scene", each of which is three hours long, with minimalist stage beauty and highlighting the exquisite and exquisite performance. Among them, the "whole book" is divided into nine acts, with the love between Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun as the main line, and pays more attention to the integrity of the story, while the "selection" includes five excerpts, leaving room for Ruan Dacheng, Li Xiangjun, Li Zhenli, Hou Fangyu and Shi Kefa to shine in a combination of points and faces, and paying more attention to the performance and appreciation. This arrangement and design is different from the common performance forms of "even the script", "the whole book", "the essence book" and the "condensed version" of opera performances, the two major operas have their own emphasis, and they are not exchanged, and there are both care and complements between the two, which not only avoids the difficulty of choosing between space limitations, but also brings a rich level of Zhengye and wilderness, providing the audience with a unique viewing experience.
In Kong Shangren's original work of "Peach Blossom Fan", there is a set of generous and pathetic northern songs "Mourning Jiangnan", which speaks of the sense of rise and fall, expresses the pain of the country, combines the scattered and scattered, the scenes are blended, the lyrics are elegant, and the style is extremely high, and it has been selected into the teaching materials many times. In "One Play, Two Looks" and "Peach Blossom Fan", the "Mourning Jiangnan" suite is first placed at the beginning of the "whole book" performance, and the actors wear water clothes and sing the first cappella in the form of "flashbacks" to sing the desolate and dilapidated scene after the "change of map" with blood and tears, so that the audience can immediately integrate into the desolate and sad mood; Through the feeling of detachment, write the sense of rise and fall", the overall theme is once again set to the climax, which can be described as the finishing touch.
Kunqu opera is known as "ten legends and nine lovesickness", and most of them are dominated by the love between men and women. And because the Chinese have always liked happy endings, drama novels mostly end in happy reunions, but "Peach Blossom Fan" not only breaks away from the reunion cliché, but also integrates love into the broken historical scroll of mountains and rivers through the love tragedy of Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun, a pair of talented and beautiful people in troubled times, so as to express the deeper feelings of the literati for their family and country, and the connotation and emotion are extremely thick and profound.
In the original work of "Peach Blossom Fan", Hou Fangyu and Li Xiangjun finally reunited after experiencing all kinds of joys and sorrows, and were about to recount the old feelings, but they were woken up by the Taoist priest: "Two idiots, where do you see the country? Where is the home? Where is the king? Where is the father? In the whole book of "One Play and Two Looks" "Peach Blossom Fan", the scene of "aftertaste" at the end of the screenwriter Zhang Hong was adapted into another more intriguing treatment: Hou Fangyu, who was disillusioned by the ruin of the country and his family, avoided the Taoist temple, while Li Xiangjun adhered to the nostalgia for his homeland and his loyalty to love, and searched outside the Taoist temple in the vast world. Hou Fangyu in the courtyard heard Li Xiangjun's voice, and he couldn't suppress his excitement, but he didn't dare to open the door because of shame and helplessness. The lovers, who suffered from parting and longing, finally lost the opportunity to reunite. When Gong Yinlei and Shi Xiaming, the two famous actors of "Plum Blossom Award" Kunqu Opera, sang a pair of lovers who were obviously close at hand but were like two worlds across the virtual courtyard gate that did not exist on the opera stage, and the audience was also deeply moved.
Such an adaptation is not only more tragic, but also more prominent.
The fold of "Fengzhou" in "Choosing the Scene" is also a successful adaptation that is highly affirmed by fans. The protagonist of this play is Li Xiangjun's fake mother Li Zhenli in the brothel, and she doesn't write much in the whole book. In "Fengzhou", it focuses on the ups and downs of Li Zhenli's fate of marrying Tian Yang for Li Xiangjun, being swept away because of the jealousy of the eldest woman, and finally marrying a veteran and wandering on the river. "The world is impermanent, the turbid waves are surging, who is not in the boat?" This sad and joyful scene makes people feel that in the turbulent times of the broken mountains and rivers in the late Ming Dynasty, all living beings are like boats on the river, drifting away in the torrent of fate.
The most shocking thing about this version of "Peach Blossom Fan" is the "Shi Kefa Shenjiang Martyrdom", which is interpreted in the whole book and in the selection, which can be called the "soul of the play". The 3,000 soldiers led by Shi Kefa, the general of the Southern Ming Dynasty, died as thieves, but the anxiously waiting reinforcements were transferred, and a loyal and patriotic general finally ended up with no country, no home, and nowhere to go, and finally had to die tragically sinking into the river. Ke Jun, a famous Kunqu opera actor of the "Plum Blossom Award" dressed in a white flag, created an all-round tragic hero image full of integrity but born at an untimely time with his emotional singing, delicate portrayal, and 540-degree zombie fall, which also aroused the strong emotion in the audience's heart.
Kunqu opera is a high degree of integration of elegant literature and exquisite performance, and at the same time, it has high humanistic value and artistic charm because of its concern for human nature, emotion, times and destiny. Jiangsu Kunqu Opera "Peach Blossom Fan" came to Beijing this time, whether it is in Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center or Peking University Centennial Lecture Hall, it has received excellent box office and word of mouth, and is highly sought after by young audiences and Kochi opera fans. It shows that the inheritance and innovation of the perfect combination of traditional classics and contemporary interpretations have endless appeal and vitality, and will attract more audiences and bosom friends in this era of paying more attention to the humanistic spirit.