Sustaining the Art of Chinese Opera

 

The performance of Chinese opera on Taiwan has been over 100 years.And the establishment of the National GuoGuang Opera Company has been 15 years.This is the only national-level Chinese opera company on Taiwan.The performance skills of current actors were inherited by the elder performers coming to Taiwan for performance after 1945.These old performance staff, based on their rich performance experience, cultivated huge amount young talents, and thus let the Chinese opera has its roots on Taiwan.They laid the foundation to Chinese opera performance art on Taiwan.Those who enjoyed great fame across the Straight, such as Xiao-Zhuang Quo, Hei-Ming Wei, Wen-Hua Tang, and Lu-Hao Chu are all coming from the three military opera companies.

Combining Modern Viewpoint, Repackaging Operas

 

President Chen indicated that since the GuoGuang Opera Company is as the national-level team for the Chinese opera performing art, in order to let the art goes toward more subtle, more popular, lively, and multiple, it is the very duty to adopt and edit of the operas.Repackaging and design of various operas will always refresh the image of the audience.Like for instance, the Spring pubic performance was operas based on the themes of “ghost” and “madness.”Or in Summer, a series of operas based on the horoscope of “green dragon” and “white tiger.”These selections will let the new audience open their eyes, and the old ones smile with understanding.These performances not only sharpen the basic efforts of the actors, but make new, refreshing interpretations to classic operas.

 

And the Company, to show its creativity, has launched off-Broadway experiment works, indicating innovation and advent guard “fringe theater”, and representing its newness and change.To put it simple, the Company tries to get away the bottleneck of the young people dislike watching Chinese opera.Therefore, by way of the fringe theater form that young people are interested to attract young generation to promote Chinese opera.Cooperation of Chinese music company and Chinese opera literary and military music team, in the beginning of opera music to blend symphony to let the opera music style gets different flavor.Such as the cooperation with NSO of “Sunlight After Snowfall” which let the audience felt refreshing in audio-visual senses.In addition, in terms of the theatric performance, Chinese opera has been constantly innovated.“Orlando,” cooperated with foreign director, let western modern theater encounter with the oriental classic Chinese opera.West and East hand in hand, and employs the theatric space to play with shift of time and moment, the opera creates an unusual lightening fantastic work, which in everyway shows the hardworking, thoughtfulness, and the courage of trying out of the Company.

The Company Seeking for New Positioning－Localization of Chinese Opera

 

Opera walked to civil, blending local culture and folklore stories.“Ma-Zu,” “Cheng-Gong Zheng” and “Tian-Ding Liao” is the “Trilogy of Taiwan.”These can be seen as the stage style of Chinese opera developing multi traditional opera, and the beginning of innovated new titles, and walked into people’s life.Such performance coming from Taiwan’s civil subjects, cultivated the affinity of local audience, deeply fond by audience.We are positive to those efforts and achievements.

Essence of the Chinese Opera Revived for the GuoGuang Opera Company Looking into the Prosperous Future

 

President Chen said sadly, that in recent years, Chinese opera faced great social impact.It is primarily because elder audience gradually faded away, and it is unattractive to young people.While there is no way to expand the base of audience, the Company has been uneasy to walk along the way. Therefore, it began to feel sense of crisis.In order to create a new historic page, the Company based on the vivid vitality of the traditional old operas, and constantly injected new concept of directing, renew the plays, combining the lighting effects to the stage design, blending modern music style to the Chinese music composition, and thus to continuously launches good operas with good comments, which not only stabilize elder audience, but also attracts young audience to the theater.

 

Although Taiwan was not the origin place for Chinese opera, that made cultivation of talents and audience difficult in the first place.However, in terms of the subtlety of the opera production, self-awareness of the actors to break through, the holistic understanding among the performance team, as well as the creativity of plays and operas, we firmly believe that under the professional leadership of President Mr. Zhao-Hu Chen and the Director of Art, Miss An-Chi Wang, the vision of the Company would be high and big.It is expected that the cultural pulse of Taiwan Chinese Opera will be continuously beaten, and the flower of art will grow forever.

Reference: interview with President Mr. Zhao-Hu Chen of the Guoguang Opera Company
Source of the photos: provided and authorized Guoguang Opera Company

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