Saturday, September 6, 2008

Puxian opera

Puxian opera

Puppet opera

Puppet opera


Nanxi is an early form of drama, developed from ancient traditions of , singing, and dancing during the Song Dynasty in the 12th century AD. The name means literally "Southern drama", and the form originated in the area around Wenzhou in Southern China.

Nanxi started as combinations of Song plays and local folk songs and ballads, using colloquial language and large numbers of scenes. As with Western operetta, spoken passages alternated with verses set to popular music. Professional companies of actors performed nanxi in theatres that could hold thousands of spectators. Nanxi developed into the later and more complex dramatic form known as chuanqi, and later still into kunqu.

Nanxi had seven role types, many of which were seen in later Chinese opera forms. Sheng were heroic male character and Dan heroines. Mo, Jing, Chou, Wai, and Hou were less defined roles, and actors in these role types portrayed a variety of characters in the same play. The role types of later forms of Chinese opera were made more strict, but can be seen to have their roots in Nanxi.

Due to its coarse language, rough prosody, and unsophisticated literary style, ''nanxi'' was not mentioned in contemporary historiography and had been virtually forgotten by scholars after the mid-sixteenth century Of the large numbers of Nanxi originally written, only 283 titles and 20 play texts survive.


*''Encyclopædia Britannica'' 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 19 January 2006
* — Cora Agatucci

Min opera

Min opera , a.k.a. Fuzhou drama , is one of the major traditional forms in Fujian Province. It enjoys a good popularity in Fuzhou, Middle Fujian, East Fujian and North Fujian where Fuzhou dialect is spoken, as well as in Taiwan and Malay Archipelago. Having been evolving for 300 years, Min opera became fixed in the early 20th century.



Liyuan opera

Liyuan opera is a form of Chinese opera originating in the Fujian province of the People's Republic of China.




Kunqu boasts a 600-year history and is known as the "teacher" or "mother" of a hundred operas, because of its influence on other Chinese theatre forms, including Jingju. Its emergence ushered in the second Golden Era of Chinese drama, but by the early twentieth century it had nearly disappeared, exacerbated by deliberate attempts to suppress it during the Cultural Revolution.

One of the major literary forms of the and dynasties was chuanqi drama, originating from the South. Plays that continue to be famous today, including ''The Peony Pavilion'' and ''The Peach Blossom Fan'', were originally written for the Kunqu stage. In addition, many classical Chinese novels and stories, such as ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', ''Water Margin'' and ''Journey to the West'' were adapted very early into dramatic pieces.

Today, Kunqu is performed professionally in seven Mainland Chinese cities: Beijing , Shanghai , Suzhou , Nanjing , Chenzhou , Yongjia County/Wenzhou and Hangzhou , as well as in Taipei. Non-professional opera societies are active in many other cities in China and abroad, and opera companies occasionally tour.



*''The Peony Pavilion''
*''The Peach Blossom Fan''
*''The Palace of Long Life''
*''The Western Mansion''
*''The Injustice done to Dou E''


*Tang Xianzu
*Kong Shangren
*Hong Sheng
*Feng Menglong


*Yu Zhenfei
*Mei Lanfang
*Zhang Jiqing
*Wang Shiyu
*Yue Meiti
*Liang Guyin
*Cai Zhengren
*Ji Zhenhua
*Jennifer Hua Wenyi
*Qian Yi


''Huju'' is a variety of Chinese opera from the area of Shanghai. It is typically sung in the Shanghainese dialect.

It is particularly popular in Baihe, the oldest town in the of Shanghai. There are eight to ten ''huju'' troupes in the town, and many local residents hire the troupes to perform for weddings and funerals.

''Huju'' is accompanied by an ensemble of , including ''dizi'' , ''erhu'' , ''pipa'' , ''yangqin'' , and percussion. The instrumentation and style are closely related to the instrumental genre of ''Jiangnan sizhu''.

The famous Chinese composition "Purple Bamboo Melody" is adapted from ''huju''.