Mei Lanfang is a famous Peking Opera performance artist in China and one of the four famous Peking Opera artists. With a mellow and fluent, emotionally reserved, round and sweet singing voice, as well as a deep understanding of stage performance, he has successfully created many successful stage images.
In her performance of "Broken Bridge", the white lady's push and pull for Xu Xian has interpreted the original stage accident into an insurmountable classic performance.
At that time, Mei Lanfang could be said to be a national treasure artist. In the inheritance with the Peking Opera art Mei Lanfang, she dared to innovate and dare to reinterpret the classics that have formed a fixed performance routine and give a new soul.
And Mei Lanfang also tried to bring the art of Peking Opera to the world. So many contributions are collected by Mei Lanfang alone, which is really unprecedented. Unfortunately, he died in 1961, and at the age of 67, he left with many dreams.
This year, Mei Lanfang's performance of "Mu Guiying Hanging Commander" became a masterpiece on the stage. Since then, there has been no Mei Lanfang in the world.
After Mei Lanfang's death, many newspapers and periodicals such as the People's Daily published obituaries on the front page, and the state also set up a special funeral committee for her. Chen Yi, the director of the Funeral Committee, once called him "a perfect generation"
However, the artistic fault line in the "special period" period made the development of Peking Opera art lag behind. When the special period had just passed, not only did the Meipai talents wither away, but the entire Peking Opera art circle at that time was also unprecedentedly snubbed.
Although in the years since, with the efforts of generations of Peking Opera inheritors to develop and excavate, along with the decline of Mei Pai art, people have always believed that Mei Lanfang's achievements are difficult for future generations to reproduce. This naturally includes Mei Lanfang's heirs.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > for the sake of heirs, failing to live up to the original</h1>
Speaking of Mei Lanfang's heirs, we have to mention a public case here. That is the story between Mei Lanfang and the original wife Wang Minghua.
Mei Lanfang was originally the only son in the family, because her uncle Mei Yutian had no children under his knees, so Mei Lanfang had the hope of the two rooms of the Mei family since she was a child. In the future, we must not only bear the inheritance of the bloodline, but also bear the inheritance of family learning. It shows the weight of the burden on his body.
Mei Lanfang, who studied art in her early years, suffered a lot, there was never any genius in the world, and the talent was more often than ninety-nine percent of the efforts.
In addition to practicing waist horses, body shape, and singing voice, Mei Lanfang in her youth also had to be erudite and strong in her ability to improve her artistic understanding.
Because the two rooms of the Mei family regard it as the only heir to take over the mantle. Under such circumstances, the outside world should think that Mei Lanfang learned art early and could take the lead alone as a teenager.
However, under such expectations, Mei Lanfang suffered the most depressed period of time in her life.
It is said that "if you want to wear its crown, you will be weighed by it", born in such an artistic family, having been carefully adjusted by my uncle and father, I naturally have to bear much more attention than others.
In the eyes of outsiders, Mei Lanfang's performance can only succeed, how can Mei Lanfang fail?
But in fact, when Mei Lanfang entered the "inverted warehouse" period when she was a teenager, she almost stabbed the big basket. Although Mei Lanfang had not yet entered the warehouse reversal period, the father and uncle in the family had long been prepared to let her eat a lot of medicinal foods that helped her throat, the purpose of which was to let him smoothly pass the collapse period.
However, Mei Lanfang used her voice every day, and the burden on her throat was too heavy; at the same time, the inversion of the warehouse was a physiological phenomenon of men, and there was something that could be stopped by a few doses of medicine. In desperation, after consulting with his uncle, his father decided to suspend Mei Lanfang's performance and wait until the end of the collapse period to watch the after-effects.
The misfortune is that during the time when Mei Lanfang collapsed, Mei Lanfang's parents suddenly died, and successive blows made Mei Lanfang almost unable to support it. Fortunately, with the help of her uncle's family, Mei Lanfang's life was barely sustainable.
But this time the change also made his uncle worried, in the face of the misfortune of life, as well as the Mei family's people Ding withered, at this time Mei Lanfang's uncle was thinking about how to make the Mei family carry forward and pass on the family learning.
So under the arrangement of her uncle, Mei Lanfang and Wang Minghua borrowed Chong Xi to marry. The development of Meipai Peking Opera art and Mei Lanfang's artistic achievements are largely due to Wang Minghua's credit.
Because Wang Minghua was born in a Peking Opera family, he is also a rare Hua Dan on the stage. However, for the sake of her husband's career, Wang Minghua was willing to take a back seat and became Mei Lanfang's xiannei helper.
After marriage, Mei Lanfang and Wang Minghua not only had two children, but also often discussed the problems of Peking Opera performance together. Wang Minghua applied all his understanding of the art of Peking Opera to Mei Lanfang's artistic practice.
This makes Mei Lanfang not only not have a little "retirement" during this time at home, but on the contrary, her understanding of stage performance has also risen to a very high level.
Therefore, as soon as Mei Lanfang came on stage after the end of the collapse period, it attracted the praise of the audience, and the career also embarked on the first peak period, and the name of Mei's wife soon spread throughout Beijing, as long as Mei's wife came to the stage, it was full.
It was at this time that Wang Minghua made a decision to change the fate of his life in order to wholeheartedly support her husband's career. That is, to choose sterilization after having two children.
Originally, Wang Minghua's decision was also understandable, but in fact, Wang Minghua estimated his position in her husband's heart too high, and she also underestimated Mei Lanfang's dedication to inheritance.
A change broke the original happy life, and two children died of hives. Mei Lanfang, who had originally inherited the lineage of the two houses at the same time, fell into a dilemma. Wang Minghua has been neutered, as if it is impossible to regenerate.
So under the arrangement of her uncle Mei Yutian, Mei Lanfang married another concubine, Fu Zhifang. At first, Wang Minghua also supported Mei Lanfang's marriage to Fu Zhifang, after all, at that time when the traditional female Moral culture was prevalent, all this was normal.
However, Wang Minghua misestimated his psychological endurance, and did not think at all about how much fu zhifang's entry would bring to his life.
After Fu Zhifang entered the door, she quickly became pregnant with Mei Lanfang's flesh and bones. It was also at this time that Wang Minghua began to feel that the change in things had exceeded his expectations.
Before Fu Zhifang's child was born, people in the house had begun to snub Wang Minghua, and even Mei Lanfang rarely communicated with Wang Minghua.
After Fu Zhifang gave birth to a child, Wang Minghua was even more snubbed, and such a life finally crushed Wang Minghua's heart. What is even more painful is that after giving birth to the child, Mei Lanfang actually agreed to Fu Zhifang's request to sit on an equal footing with Wang Minghua, regardless of size.
Although it is said that it is no matter how big or small, it is equal to sit on an equal footing, but it is disgusted in the light and in the dark. At this time, Mei Lanfang, who had achieved fame, had forgotten Wang Minghua's support for his career in front of the whole person.
It wasn't until after Wang Minghua's death that Mei Lanfang realized that the woman who called herself "sister" when she dressed up as Danjiao would never come back.
In 1967, before Mei Lanfang died of illness, she said an important wish, that is, she hoped to be buried with Wang Minghua in Wanhua Mountain on the east side of Xiangshan Mountain. Fu Zhifang did so, and also left a cemetery for himself there.
This was Mei Lanfang's only wish before her death, and the only thing she could do for Wang Minghua. Although Mei Lanfang's life is inseparable from her dedication and struggle for art, it is not objective for Mei Pai's artistic achievements to only lament Mei Lanfang and ignore the merits of his wife Wang Minghua.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="5" > leafy, it is still inevitable that there will be a lack of heirs</h1>
After Wang Minghua's death, Mei Lanfang and Fu Zhifang gave birth to a total of nine children, but unfortunately, five of them died tragically, and only four children could be left.
They are Mei Baochen (fourth son), Mei Baozhen (Shaowu) (fifth son), Mei Baoyue (seventh daughter) and Mei Baojiu (younger son).
After being with Fu Zhifang, Mei Lanfang had nine sons in a row, and although five of them died, they were also considered to be prosperous. But even this could not avoid the fate of the gradual decline of Meipai art. First of all, Let's talk about Mei Baochen and Mei Baozhen.
Mei Lanfang's fourth son, Mei Baochen, was born in 1925, and although he was born into a Peking Opera family, he did not have a son to inherit his father's business. On the contrary, Mei Baochen's academic achievements are far more than his achievements in the art of Peking Opera. Home learning is only a hobby, but it is not its strength.
Mei Baochen has been working at the Beijing Institute of Design since graduating from Aurora University in Shanghai. Although he received Wang Shaoqing's personal inheritance because of his family's academic origins, he only made great achievements in Huqin and did not receive the true transmission of his father.
After his death in 2008, people talked more about his achievements in architecture and his father. The two sons and daughters under Mei Baochen did not engage in the performance of Peking Opera art.
Similar to Mei Baochen's experience is his fifth son Mei Baozhen (Mei Shaowu). Born in 1928, Mei Baozhen graduated from Yenching University in Beijing and went to the United States to study literature. After returning to China, he has been engaged in literary creation and translation.
His translations of foreign literature and scholarship such as "A Collection of Albanian Short Stories", "A Hungarian Rich Man", "Lord Heilmann", "The Silence of Ashes", "Marx and World Literature", "The Dark Fire", and "The Thin Man" are still considered to be classic translations handed down from generation to generation.
He himself has written books such as "My Father Mei Lanfang". It has left important documents for future generations to study Mei Lanfang, but the personal inheritance of Mei Pai art is not very impressive. His son Mei Weidong also switched to the financial industry.
Let's talk about Mei Lanfang's seven daughters, Mei Baoyue. Mei Baoyue was supposed to "abandon opera and follow the text" like her two brothers, but under the advice of her father Mei Lanfang's partner Li Guifen, she still chose to engage in the performing arts of Peking Opera.
Originally, she was not willing to participate in the theater industry, but from her bones, she flowed with the family's artistic genes. Because of his natural loud voice, he took the path of the old student, and took a completely different path for his father's Danjiao performance.
However, because of her family background, she has a deep understanding of the art of Peking Opera. After graduating from university, he worked as a Chinese language teacher at the Chinese Opera School.
Later, after the death of her father, Mei Baoyue spent a lot of effort to achieve extremely high achievements in the art of Peking Opera. During this period, he also visited many Surviving Peking Opera artists at that time, although he and his father Mei Lanfang walked in different artistic styles and appearances, but it can also be regarded as a model for his mountain stone to attack jade.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > can the descendant Mei Baojiu represent Meipai art? </h1>
Among Mei Lanfang's sons, the only one who can represent Mei Pai's artistic achievements is Mei Baojiu.
When she was a teenager, Mei Baojiu had no intention of learning drama, Mei Lanfang used all means to teach her young son, and also invited many famous characters in the world to be masters, but Mei Baojiu in her youth never paid attention to this matter.
It was not until 1961, after Mei Lanfang's death, that Mei Baojiu deeply felt the reality of Mei Pai's slightly withered art, and at this time Mei Baojiu began to study Peking Opera performance.
Mei Baojiu, who has passed the golden period of learning to play, although diligent, is still a little "boy skill", and the stage performance is even more different from her father.
Since then, Mei Baojiu has constantly visited famous teachers and pondered with his brothers, but without his father's words and deeds, the gap between his artistic expression and his father has never been able to make up for it.
The famous opera scholar Zhang Yihe said that Mei Baojiu is also called a master, and Peking Opera is really finished. It shows that the gap between Mei Baojiu and her father is obvious.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > the withering of Meipai art and the support of Mei Baojiu</h1>
In contrast, Mei Lanfang was a master of Peking Opera art in the same era, and the Ma Pai art created by Mr. Ma Lianliang was much more prosperous in inheritance.
This is not only because of his high artistic attainments, but also because Mr. Ma Lianliang's noble character in dealing with career, marriage and family has won people's respect.
It cannot be said that the withering of Mei Pai's artistic heritage has much to do with mei Lanfang's failure to live up to Wang Minghua because of her request for heirs, nor can it be said that Mei Lanfang's approach is too wrong to put aside historical conditions, but after hearing about this public case, people can't help but feel that it is a creation and a trick.
Perhaps in many ways, Mei Lanfang is indeed called "a perfect generation" as Chen Yi said, but it is inappropriate to fail the original wife.
Fortunately, Mei Baojiu's painstaking support and exploration of Mei Pai's art will not be lost, but such a scene must have been unforeseeable by Mei Lanfang at that time.
Of course, the inheritance of art genres cannot be achieved only by relying on the intentional inheritance of Mei Lanfang's descendants. Those who inherit mei pai art may not be mei lanfang's descendants.
It is believed that in the future, Meipai art can still become a representative genre of Chinese Peking Opera. There will also be a master who truly inherits Mei Lanfang's artistic achievements and re-reach the peak of his art.
Text/Shi HaiGuanfu