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Ordinary audience only knows watching opera, but not to notice the divisions.What are the types of Chinese opera on earth?It can be divided into fur major categories by its nature, contents, style, and form, and then there are some ten types.Due to its abundant types of Chinese opera, and each has its feature.Below is the simple classification for your reference.First we introduce to you according to the nature of the opera:
Variety of Chinese Opera Titles and Types.
Opening gong opera: also called mao-er opera, that is the first play of the opera.Due to prior to the performance, it would hit the gong warmly to attract the audience. It is named after this reason.
Dian opera: in the past, leading actor often late for the show, acting roles normally on the stage that was easy to play and since the audience was few, acting roles could play by their own wish until the leading actor came.
Seeing guest off opera:normally the high ranking officials and business tycoon audience would came late and left early; therefore, if the last play was not good enough, it would be called seeing guest off opera.
King’s hat opera: played primarily with lao sheng as empire.
Pao-Dai opera: performed by empire and royal family wearing Mang long gown and jade belt.
Kao-Ba opera: primarily by martial lao sheng opera.
Audience may watch various opera performance.
Three Xiao opera: opera performed by young sheng, tan, and chou.
Tang Hui opera: played in the homes of wealthy and high rank official family for their birthdays and marriages, performed from noon time to early dawn, all played by famous acters.
Da Zhuo opera: named for temple for raising money to repair the shrine and for the guests came without notice to cry out loud “adding tables”.
Voluntary opera: for comforting disaster or assist the poor peers, played by the top actors without taking pays.
Cooperative opera: played by martial sheng, hua face, and chou character altogether.
A good opera takes excellent performance of actors, and the types and titles of Chinese opera are abundant.
■ In terms of contents, Chinese opera is divided into eight types:
A.Literary opera: including two types singing gong fu and performing gong fu opera:
1.singing gong fu opera: opera that sings from beginning to the end.
2.performing gong fu opera: it takes reading lyrics and performance to present the character.
B:Martial opera: divided into four types as Chang Kao, Jian I, Duan Da, and Fan Da opera:
1.Chang Kao opera: chang kao wu sheng by wearing tough and tight “kao,” such as kao flags, winding belts, kao silks and so on to show martial spirit and suitable for performance.
2.Jian I opera: wu sheng wearing arrow clothes, emphasizing martial gong fu, with dance and singing, worked hard.
3.Duan Da opera: wu sheng wearing short clothes and pants with short weapons to show cleaver and swift gong fu.
4.Fan Da opera: leadinga ctor and several people cope with to do special performance of throw, kick, hold and pick up weapons and so on.
C. Dui Er opera: performed by sheng and tan.]
D. group opera: performed by sheng, tan, jing, and chou all together.
Constant change of the plot may catch the mind of the audience.
■Divided by style:there are four types—comics, tragedy, farce, and laughing funny drama.
■Divided by form, there are four types:
A.Continuous Opera on Stage: In order to grasp the audience’s mind, it has to emphasize the plot.Therefore , lots continuous opera on the stage to have plot coherent tightly everyday to offer new stimulus, tension, and suspension.Normally it would be played over 30 days continuously.
B. Original opera:it takes a very long, big opera as a story to tell; then, the entire story is called “original opera”.
C. single opera: to abstract the marvelous and touching chapters of a book to adopt them to be a single opera.
D.Zhe ze opera:one single opera normally takes 15 to 30 hours to play, then, it would be played divided for two days of a single opera.Thus, the script is divided in to upper and lower scroll, with the end of upper scroll at the climax to attract the audience to continue watch it the second day.Later, it further developed “abstract of the essence” performance, that is called “zhe ze opera”.
Reference:
Ding-Ding Wang, Editor-in-Chief, Knowing Chinese Opera, National Taiwan Arts Education Center, 1992./sorted by the research team
Sorce of Photos: authorized and provided by the GuoGuang Opera Company