The Triumph of Kunqu or the “Elegant Drama”
1368-1644
The
region south of the Yangzi River, Jiangnan (Chieng-nan), maintained its
importance as a cultural centre. It was not only a centre of the arts and
passive resistance; it was there where a successful rebellion arose. It was led
by a Buddhist monk, Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), who made the city of
Nanjing (Nanking, Nan-ching) and its surroundings his stronghold. With his
troops he marched up to the north and deported the last Mongol ruler from the
country.
This
heralded the beginning of a new period, the Ming dynasty. Although foreign
oppression was now over, it did not change the awkward situation of the scholars
and artists. The liberator, Hongwu (Hung-wu), which was the name he was known
by when he was the ruler, turned out be an unpredictable despot. During his
time artists were in danger of losing their heads and scholars their tongues,
if any critical remarks could be detected in their plays. It resulted in the
phenomenon common in Chinese history: at the beginning of a new dynasty
censorship of plays was meticulous, almost to the point of paranoia.
An
important early Ming-period dramatic script is Pipa ji (p’i-p’a chi) or The
Story of the Lute by Gao Ming (Kao Ming) (1307–1370). It is about a
youth who flees from his parents and his young wife to attend the imperial
examination. After passing it successfully, he is forced to marry the daughter
of a prominent minister. Back home the young scholar’s parents die during a
famine. The wife dutifully takes care of their funeral rites, after which she
heads for the capital in search of her husband. She carries with her the only
possession she has, a lute. The minister’s daughter understands the love her
husband feels for the girl and agrees to accept her into the household as a
second wife.
The
Suzhou (Su-chou) region became an important economic and cultural centre. By
the Grand Canal system wealth was brought to this region with its large
concentration of population and active communication with the outside world. It
became a centre of fashion and set the standards for customs and taste
throughout the rest of China. The region’s local kunshan (Kunshan qiang, Kun-shang ch’iang) opera style gained
great popularity in the 16th century.
Wei
Liangfu , who was a composer and a singer, concentrated on a renewal of the Kunshan Style. He created a new
musical style, which was regarded as “the most melodious and romantic since the
Tang period”. Its leading instrument was a bamboo flute, whereas the northern
styles were dominated by string instruments.
Kunqu, Kun Opera or the Elegant Drama
The new form of opera, fashioned by the
composer and singer Wei Liangfu, is kunqu
(kun-ch’ü). It is the oldest form of Chinese opera still being
performed. The music has a strongly plaintive quality. With its flowing
melodies and soft and supple note of the bamboo flute, it is a typically
southern style of opera. Its singing is characterized by its long notes and
elaborated ornamentation. It is said that the general effect of kunqu music is that of “undulating
waves”.
During
the Ming dynasty kunqu emerged
as the most popular and most patronised of the many theatrical forms and it
retained its national dominance until the 19th century. It was
patronised particularly by the educated elite, the scholar-officials and the
literati. The acting technique is most demanding, since the delicate singing is
combined with constant dance-like movements. Because of the complexity of both
its language and acting technique, the educated courtesan actresses, trained in
several arts, dominated the kunqu
stage for a long time.
The
complex imagery of classical poetry and the need for increasingly ornate language
and music led to longer plays. The appreciation of this kind of art form
naturally demanded a great deal from the audience, too. The dialect used was
the Suzhou dialect, a local dialect of Chinese, which was not understood
universally in China. The increasing sophistication and the use of local
dialect were the factors that led to the gradual unpopularity of kunqu in the early 19th
century, when a new and more popular form of opera, the Peking Opera, gained a
wider audience in northern China.
The
so-called Taiping (T’ai-p’ing) Rebellion in the mid-19th century
isolated the southern region, which had traditionally been the stronghold of kunqu. The kunqu, already in decline, never regained its former status
while the northern Peking Opera replaced it in popularity. The pattern of
dramatic construction and expression developed through the kunqu were carried over into the
Peking Opera, although this new style was devised for different, less
sophisticated audiences.
In
the 1920s and 1930s the famous Peking Opera actor Mei Lanfang, together with a
kunqu scholar, established a society to revive the kunqu. Different attempts had been made in this direction for
decades. In connection with this revival a northern kunqu troupe was founded, and its style was called beikun. At the time of writing this
material, the beikun theatre
has declined to some kind of semi-kunqu, semi-Peking Opera style, struggling to
survive among other theatre forms in Beijing.
The
southern kunqu style was called
nankun. South Chinese nankun groups can be found, for
example, in Shanghai and in Nanking, the latter one probably representing the
most authentic kunqu style at
the moment. For generations many have been afraid that this unique opera form
will completely decline and disappear. In 2001 it was, however, included in the
UNESCO List of Outstanding Examples of the World’s Intangible Heritage, and a
stylised kunqu scene was one of
the highlights of the giant opening show of the Beijing Olympics in 2008,
broadcast all over the world.
The kunqu plays
The
tones, according to whether they are level, ascending, or first descending and
then ascending, or descending in pitch, affect the actual meaning of the word
and consequently create a kind of musical basis within the language itself.
The
first writer who was able to create dramatic scripts and language matching the
fashionable kunqu melodies was
Tang Xianzu (T’ang Hsien-tsu) (1550–1617). As he was contemporaneous with
Shakespeare he is sometimes called the “Shakespeare of China”. His works are
regarded as the epitome of the dramatic literature of the Ming period. His
plays are still praised for their harmonious structure, deep emotions and
sophisticated style.
His
style is often called the “dreaming” Ming style. This is because of the
so-called dream scenes, which were both his innovation and his trademark.
Through these dream scenes or sequences, in which the leading character falls
asleep, it was possible to make a character’s secret or unconscious hopes or
fears visible. The most famous of these kinds of dream sequences is in Tang
Xianzu’s most popular opera, The Peony
Pavilion, Mudan ting (Mu-tan t’ing) (synopsis).
In
the play, a young lady falls asleep in a peony garden. In her dream she meets a
young, handsome scholar and falls deeply in love with him. When she awakes and
understands that everything was only a dream, she mourns herself to death. The
effect of Tang Xianzu’s dream scenes were so moving that young female
spectators, it is said, went out of their minds, and even committed suicide.
Later, Tang Xianzu’s dream-scene technique was imitated by several less
talented playwrights, and some of them substituted Tang Xianzu’s magical poetry
with simple stage effects.
Kunqu
dramas are of a high literary standard and their poetic language is complex and
not easy to understand for modern audiences. They employ the full scale of role
categories developed in the earlier theatrical styles. They include the sheng or the male roles, the dan or the female roles, the chou or the comic roles, and the jing or the painted-face categories
(with their numerous sub-categories, to be discussed in connection with the
Peking Opera).
The
themes tended to be romantic and concerned which such things as lovers’
sorrows. Thus the leading characters in kunqu
plays are often a young lady and a young scholar. This is not always the case.
A play that is renowned for its dream sequence, called Spilling the Water in Front of a Horse, Maqian po shui (Ma-ch’ien p’o
shui), recounts the story of an elderly, less successful scholar and the
tragic end of his selfish and over-ambitious wife, played by an actress who has
specialised in the coquette female characters, called hua tan (synopsis).
One
landmark in the revival process of kunqu
was the performance of a play called Fifteen
Strings of Cash, Shiwu guan (Shih-wu kuan) in Suzhou in 1957. The play
had been seen performed as Peking opera, but in Suzhou it was again produced in
the original kunqu style. Kunqu plays were very commonly
adapted to the Peking Opera style, which had inherited so many elements from
the earlier kunqu.
A kunqu play that is also popular as
Peking opera is Longing for Worldly
Pleasures, which, in fact, had been adapted to the kunqu repertory from an even older
southern style. It is a kind of monodrama for a virtuoso huadan actress who interprets the
romantic longing of a young Buddhist nun. Another play, very popular both as kunqu opera and Peking opera, is The White Snake, Baishe zhuan (Paishe chuan).
In the play, the spirit of a white snake turns into a young woman and marries a
young pharmacist. A monk is determined to destroy the snake and her marriage.
The white snake goes through numerous hardships and ends up by being locked up
in the dungeon of a pagoda.
The White Snake is exceptional as a kunqu,
since it includes fighting scenes that employ movements from the martial arts.
That was not common in the southern kunqu
tradition, whereas the later Peking Opera makes full use of them. Before
turning to the birth of northern Peking Opera, which gained the status of the
national style after the kunqu, it is time to look at what kinds of operas were
and still are performed in other regions of China. The play was created from an
old story by Tian Han in the beginning of the 20th century.
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