Beijing Opera vs. Western Opera

Beijing Opera (AKA Peking Opera) is a 200-year old art form, now considered Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. There’s a repertoire of over 1400 operas, based on things like Chinese history, Chinese folklore and life in modern China. As it’s such an important part of Mandarin Chinese culture and history, I thought it would be interesting to take a detailed look at Peking Opera. https://i.redd.it/0uqw6uuykx711.jpg Peking Opera vs. Western Opera: There are similarities between these two traditions. For example, both have a story and performers in costumes singing. However, there are also some big differences, as detailed below. Movement There’s a big emphasis on movement: Dancing and martial arts are both considered key elements. Singing In Western opera, performers are divided into groups based on how high they sing: You have basses then tenors then altos then sopranos. (There are a few others, as well). In Peking Opera, performers are divided into fixed character types. There are shēng 生 (male characters), dàn 旦 (female characters), jìng 净 (males with painted faces) and chǒu 丑 (clowns). Each role has its own singing style – but can be at various pitches. That means you can get female performers playing a male role, such as shēng. 生、旦、净、丑 (shēng dàn jìng chǒu) Stylization Peking Opera is also much more stylized than Western Opera. For example, you can tell the jìng characters by looking at what color their face is painted. Red means loyalty, black means forthrightness, and so on. Movements are also stylized to make them round. So when looking at an object, the character will move their eyes in a circular motion from low to high before finally looking at the thing. This stops there being harsh angles when they move their head and eyes. And, when a character is changing direction, they’ll walk in an S-shape rather than just turn. There are also set movements to convey certain meanings. So if a performer raises their arm as if they’re holding a lantern, the audience will know that it’s night time. You even see stylization in dialog: Performers create a rhythm in their speech by lengthening certain syllables. Length Peking Operas used to be unbelievably long. Many operas from the Qing Dynasty had 20 or more acts and would take several days to watch. The Emperor Qianlong even commissioned an opera with an epic 240 acts. The picture below is from a modern adaptation of this opera. Today, audiences watched a condensed version, called zhezi xi. This is just one act, taken from a full opera. This act is generally the most exciting one from the whole opera. submitted by /u/Lingo_Bus [link] [comments]

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