The traditional bone old drama "Sachet" of Yu opera, also known as "Lifting the Flower Palanquin", interprets the love story of two pairs of lovers. Although the plot is full of twists and turns, full of grudges and hatred, in the end it is the best of both worlds, forming a comedic ending, rendering the eternal theme of "lovers eventually become dependents". Overall, this play is brisk and festive, and it gives the audience joy and laughter, so it has been performed for decades.
What fans know is that in the early 1960s, the play cooperated by Song Guiling and Xie Shunming caused a sensation in the Central Plains, and the performance venue in Zhengzhou was full and praised. Then Wu Bibo also performed this play, and after the "Cultural Revolution", Wang Qingfen and Hu Meiling also rehearsed this play one after another, so there were multiple versions of "Lifting the Flower Car" in the province. Until the 1990s, young talents such as Wang Quanzhen and Wang Hongli also rehearsed this play, and it was reported that Wang Quanzhen also took this play to perform in various places, and even in Hong Kong, it was also very popular. However, most theater fans, especially young opera fans, may not know that "Raising the Flower Palanquin" is the first popular song of Yao Shufang, a famous singer of Xiangfu.
Song Guiling
Yao Shufang is a famous artist of Xiangfu who is a few years later than Chen Suzhen and Si Fengying, and in her early years, she performed on the same stage with Chang Xiangyu and Wang Xiulan in Baoji and Xi'an, and later returned to Henan and has been sitting in Kaifeng, which is a famous Dan familiar to Kaifeng opera fans. Shortly after liberation, she and her husband, a famous singer and actress, took their opera team to Xingtai, Hebei Province, for many years, and were accepted and officially renamed the Handan Yu Opera Troupe. After they left Henan, I only remember that in 1956, they returned to Kaifeng to sing for a few days, and since then they have never performed in Henan, far away from the sight of Henan opera fans, and gradually forgotten by Henan opera fans.
After Yao Shufang left her hometown, I kept an eye on where she went. Around 1960, when I was flipping through the newspapers in the reading room, I suddenly saw a message published in the Beijing Daily that she was performing "Lifting the Flower Car" in Beijing, and then paid attention to the several issues of the drama magazine that year, and really saw Yao Shufang's unprecedented performance in Beijing, only to know that "Carrying the Flower Car" was adapted from the old Yu opera drama "Sachet Count", and it turned out that the scene where Zhou Fenglian got married was just a cutscene, and it was Yao Shufang who added a large section of singing voice and added four car lifters, which made this play so festive and so fiery. It is also because of the scene of "lifting the car" that Yao Shufang changed the "Sachet Count" to the more popular "Lifting the Flower Car". Two years ago, before watching the CCTV Xiqu Channel broadcast "Spring Grass Haunting" (starring Geng Qiaoyun), Li Changyu, a famous Xun sect artist who played Chuncao in this play in the 60s, recalled that her performance in a car in the play was learned from Yao Shufang's "Raising The Flower Car".
I haven't seen Yao Shufang's "Lifting the Flower Palanquin", I have only seen her two plays in her early years in Kaifeng. Watching her first play starring in "Privet Flower" before the founding of the People's Republic of China, what she remembers is that Qiu Liyu, who played her, had several small pieces of red paper pasted on her face after suffering from leprosy to show her pathology. When she drank the poisonous snake into the wine tank, miraculously cured her leprosy, he twisted his face, the red piece of paper disappeared, the scene came a "change of face", revealing a fang, did not hear other actors act like this, this may be her originality. Her second play was a small play "Xiang Son-in-Law" performed in Kaifeng in 1956, which had a simple plot and told the story of a Miaoling village girl who stole her crush. Yao Shufang naturally plays the village girl in the play, she paddles the double pulp when she appears, singing and dancing with the "magpie on the branch" of the cavity, it seems that the audience saw the innocent and lively village girl, driving a flat boat on the blue waves. She sang and did well, and the joy of the village girl about to meet her sweetheart was vividly expressed. Yao Shufang alone performed this drama full of brilliance, causing continuous laughter and applause, which shows the depth of her singing skills. Her superb performance in this small play and her "sitting on the car" in her masterpiece "Carrying the Flower Car" can be described as the same thing. Being good at tasting actions such as sitting in a car and rowing a boat in life, extracting wonderful procedural movements from them and using them for exaggerated performances on the stage, should be a major feature of Yao Shufang's stage art.
Song Guiling is a famous artist of the late generation, she is also an authentic Kaifeng person, born in poverty, and became famous after liberation. Initially, she performed on stage at the Peace Theater, and was listed as a starring role with li zhizhen, Guan Lingfeng and other famous characters, during which time I watched her starring in "The Woman in Green" (that is, "Shame Blood"), "Mu Guiying Down the Mountain" and other plays. After that, she went to the Yu Opera Troupe in Kaifeng to take a class, and I watched her "Butterfly Cup" and other plays again, and for a while she went to the Yu Opera Troupe in Anyang to sing for a few years, and then when she was transferred to the Provincial Yu Opera Troupe, I can't say for sure.
Song Guiling followed the drama team from an early age and became famous while learning. She studied under Ma Shuangzhi and many other famous dramatists, and the martial arts master was taught by the famous martial arts actor Golden Snub-nosed Monkey (stage name) in Kaifeng in the early years. He was unblocked by martial arts, focusing on Hua Dan and Dao Ma Dan. Her voice is sweet and soft, which is very suitable for playing a young and beautiful boudoir girl, and a martial arts girl with special skills. And often perform some cheerful and joyful scenes, because crying and crying scenes are not her strong points. She also often acted in some martial arts dramas, and when she performed the sensational "Invincible Building" in the Peace Theater, she starred as a chivalrous woman. In the 1960s, her "Raising the Flower Palanquin" made her famous in the Central Plains, and a song "Three Cannon Flower Palanquins Outside the Gate of the Palace" was sung by thousands of people.
Song Guiling died prematurely. The only video she left behind is probably "Lifting the Flower Palanquin", and the recording is only part of the scenes of "Mu Guiying Down the Mountain", "Butterfly Cup" and "Sisters' Complaint". But I can still feel her artistic charm, and her beauty, which still remains in my heart. Although she is not a tube nose, the side view is not perfect, but the costume is still very beautiful. In the photo studio on the south side of the back street of Kaifeng Temple, there were two large-scale stills of Song Guiling: one was Li Fang in the overhead "Blood of Shame", splitting a single fork, dressed in a heroic woman's costume, and the other was a small Hua Dan, holding an open folding fan, feminine and delicate. Although there were no color photos at that time, the two black and white photos, painted by the artists with colorful oil paints, were still beautiful, allowing passers-by to stop and watch, and never return.
The two artists are both Kaifeng girls, and they are famous for singing "Lifting the Flower Palanquin" together. Since Yao Shufang did not leave a video of this play, it is impossible to determine whether Song Guiling's "Lifting the Flower Car" was learned from Yao Shufang, nor can it compare the difference between singing and performance. But this does not prevent us from coming to such a conclusion: Yao Shufang and Song Guiling, two famous artists of auspicious tones, have paid great efforts to the traditional old drama "Sachet Count", which has made Zhou Fenglian's character characteristics of being straightforward and spicy and happy to help others more distinct, and only then has "Raising the Flower Palanquin" more dramatic and ideological, and has been enjoyed by the majority of opera fans for 50 years.
"Raising the Flower Car", which integrates the wisdom and ingenuity of several generations of Yu opera people, still has great room for improvement in its cultural and artistic taste. It is hoped that contemporary screenwriters, directors and actors will jointly study this play, give it more fashion elements, and make this play sound better, better looking, and more able to reflect the aesthetic concepts of contemporary people.