Classical Music

The Shanghai Conservatory of Music is a prestigious clearing house of Chinese talent. One of its most famous former students is Liao Changyong, a world-class baritone who has performed with Placido Domingo, among others. Other famous classical music venues include the Shanghai Concert Hall and the Oriental Art Center.

Chinese Opera

Contemporary Chinese opera, of which the most famous is Beijing opera (Jingju), has a rich and continuous history of some 900 years. Evolving from a convergence of comic and ballad traditions in the Northern Song period, Chinese opera brought together a disparate range of forms: acrobatics, martial arts, poetic arias and stylised dance.

CALLIGRAPHY

The character which means ‘eternal’, contains the five fundamental brushstrokes necessary to master calligraphy.

Over 100 varieties of opera exist in China today and many are performed in Shanghai. Shanghainese opera (Huju), sometimes called flower-drum opera, is performed in the local dialect and has its origins in the folk songs of Pudong. Yueju opera (Yueju) was born in and around Shaoxing County in neighbouring Zhejiang (the ancient state of Yue) in the early 20th century. Yueju roles are normally played by women. Kunju opera (Kunju) or Kunqu opera (Kunqu) originates from Kunshan, near Suzhou in neighbouring Jiangsu.

Operas were usually performed by travelling troupes, who had a low social status in traditional Chinese society. Chinese law forbade mixed-sex performances, forcing actors to act out roles of the opposite sex. Opera troupes were frequently associated with homosexuality in the public imagination, contributing further to their lowly status.

The shrill singing and loud percussion of Chinese opera were designed to be heard over the public throng, prompting American writer PJ O’Rourke to say it was ‘as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty drums during a birdcall contest’.

Formerly, opera was performed mostly on open-air stages in markets, streets, teahouses or temple courtyards.

The actors take on stylised stock characters who are instantly recognisable to the audience. Most stories are derived from classical literature and Chinese mythology and tell of disasters, natural calamities, intrigues or rebellions. The musicians usually sit on the stage in plain clothes and play without written scores.

China’s most legendary 20th-century opera star was Mei Lanfang, who allegedly performed privately for several of Shanghai’s gangland bosses in the 1930s. The most central venue for appreciating Chinese opera in Shanghai is the Yifu Theatre on Fuzhou Rd.

The lower Yangzi region has a long tradition of storytelling, farce, comic talk and mimicking, all of which were traditionally performed in teahouses. Hangzhou and Suzhou have their own variants. Pingtan balladry is a mix of pinghua (Suzhou-style storytelling) and tanci (ballad singing), accompanied by the pipa (lute) and sanxian (banjo). You can hear samples of various Chinese operas and pingtan at the Shanghai History Museum in Pudong, or at the Pingtan Museum in Suzhou.

Cinema

Early Film

The first screening of any film in China illuminated the garden of a Shanghai teahouse in 1896, when Spanish entrepreneur Galen Bocca showed a series of one-reel films to astonished audiences. The city’s first cinema opened up in 1908, but before films could reach their glamorous peak in the 1930s, filmmakers had to convince the distrustful Shanghainese that it was worth their hard-earned cash. Soon hooked, the city boasted more than 35 cinemas and over 140 film companies by 1930. Shanghai’s teahouse culture began to feel the pinch, along with a host of traditional performing arts.

The Old Film Cafe in Hongkou, housed in a beautiful three-storey brick building with charming wooden interior, shows old Shanghai films on demand, although few have English subtitles.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14