It is difficult to give an accurate figure of how many stories have been performed in Beijing Opera. There is a Peking Opera expert, Tao, who compiled a book called "A Preliminary Study of Peking Opera Plays" to collect stories of Peking Opera performances. Yes 1383. In fact, the story of Beijing opera is far more than that. If the stories in Beijing Opera are connected in series, it is like a long historical picture. From myths and legends, from the beginning of mankind to our life today, in every historical period of the Chinese nation, many unusual or interesting stories have been put on the stage of Peking Opera.
Most of the stories in Beijing Opera come from various novels and romance novels. Stories in novels such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Biography of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Water Margin, Romance of Yang Jiajiang and Yue Legend. It has been adapted into Beijing Opera. Although some operas and Peking Opera were transplanted from Kunqu Opera, Bangzi and other ancient operas, their original source was these novels.
When Peking Opera was just formed, there was an outstanding artist, Lu Shengkui, who was both an actor and a screenwriter. He compiled the stories in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms into 36 Peking Opera series. This series was called "Liantai Benxi" at that time. He plays Zhuge Liang himself, two other outstanding artists, Cheng Changgeng, Lu Su and Xu Xiaoxiang, Zhou Yu. Their performance was a great success. The three actors were praised by the audience as "living Kong Ming", "living Lu Su" and "living Zhou Yu" respectively. The play has also become one of the representative works of Beijing Opera, and many wonderful parts of it are often performed on the stage until today. After the 1950s, several dramas, such as Heroes Will Borrow Dongfeng and Hanjinkou in Changbanpo, were also made into movies.
The story of Beijing Opera has a great influence on people. Like other drama stories, they have always been an important way for China people to understand history and society.
Beijing opera is best at stories related to politics. If it is related to politics, it will inevitably lead to war. So many stories in Beijing Opera are military. The protagonist of ancient military naturally has emperors and generals. Therefore, some people call Peking Opera "emperors will play with each other". The "Three Kingdoms Opera" just mentioned belongs to this category.
However, the stories of emperors and generals in Beijing Opera are often criticized by historians. Because many stories in Beijing opera are not written according to the records in the history books at all. For example, there is a play called "Second Palace", which is about a struggle within the imperial court after the death of Zhu Zaixiang, the Ming emperor.
Zhu Zaiyu was a short-lived emperor. When he died, the prince was a baby. Therefore, Li Liang, the prince's grandfather, plotted to seize the throne. He asked his daughter Li Yanfei to cede power to him temporarily, and said that when the prince grew up, he would return the country to him. There are two loyal ministers, one is lord protector Xu, and the other is the assistant minister of the Ministry of War, which is equivalent to the current Deputy Minister of Defense. They saw through Li Liang's tricks and tried to convince Li Yanfei. Li Yanfei trusted her father, drove two loyal ministers out of the palace and abandoned the country. After Li Liang took office, he immediately showed his ferocious face and put his daughter and grandson in limbo. Later, he and Xu transferred troops to catch them. The country returned to Zhu's hands.
The story created by this folk artist is not only completely fictional, but also the author is not familiar with court life, and many details and language in the play are untrue. No wonder a famous writer once said that there are "almost no works" in such plays as "Two Entering the Palace". So, is this drama completely meaningless and worthless in terms of ideological content? If not, what is its value?
In fact, although the author of this Peking Opera script is not familiar with court life, he wrote some things that did not happen, and also wrote some details that are unlikely to happen in court. But they had a deep understanding of the essence of feudal society, especially the feudal system. What is the essence of feudalism? That is, the state is the private property of the emperor. The emperor has a famous saying: "I am a country." Translated into Mandarin, it means: "Emperor, I am a country". It is precisely because the country's mountains and rivers have become the private property of the royal family that the royal family will stage the farce of "entering the palace twice", which is actually a farce that takes away the mountains and rivers. There are many such stories in Beijing opera, which let us vividly see the most essential truth of feudal society today. From this perspective, the story of Peking Opera is still our "textbook".
Peking Opera is a kind of folk art, and its stories are often filled with the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people in feudal times and their human feelings. This tendency will be more obvious after many stories in novel romance are put on the stage again by Beijing Opera. The familiar story of Yang Jiajiang has changed from novel to Peking Opera.
The story of the Song people's expedition to Liao was circulated among the people in the Song and Yuan Dynasties and was compiled into a drama. In the Ming Dynasty, a relatively complete novel appeared. Nowadays, the theme of Yang Jiajiang's novels is generally to publicize "patriotism". In fact, more accurately, it is the word "loyalty and courage".
Some versions of this novel are called "the brave romance of Yang Jiafu's generation". The feudal rulers of the Qing Dynasty attached great importance to this theme. Emperor Jiaqing personally presided over and was collectively created by court literati, which greatly developed this theme and compiled 240 Kunqu opera series for performance in the palace. It was named Xiao Shao in Zhao Dynasty, which means "Elegant Music in the Age of Shengping". Later, Kunqu opera declined and Peking Opera became popular. Empress dowager cixi, who was in power in the Qing dynasty at that time, asked a large number of court scholars to change "Zhao Chao Xiao Shao" into a Beijing opera version, which was changed for two years and changed to 147. According to the author's own statement, the purpose of editing this drama is to "quench thirst by drinking poison" and "feel loyalty and filial piety". Obviously, the Education Loyalty Festival has been a traditional theme in Yang Jiajiang's stories for hundreds of years. To this day, there are still many people interested in this subject.
However, the story of Yang Jiajiang in Beijing Opera is quite different from this tradition. In particular, Yang Jiajiang Opera, which has not been eliminated by the audience for many years, has become a classic through the efforts of several generations of Peking Opera artists, which is quite different from the traditional Yang Jiajiang story theme. Nowadays, Yang Jiajiang's plays, which are popular on the stage, rarely truly depict war stories between Song and Liao feudal regimes. Most of them describe people's joys and sorrows in the war with this war as the background. It can be said that there are two main contents in Beijing Opera and Yang Jiajiang Opera: one is Yang Jiajiang's romantic love in the war. For example, write the biography of She Tang by Yang Jiye and She Saihua; Write Yang and Chai Princess's No.1 Scholar Media; Write and Mu's "Mu Tianwang Mu Kezhai Yuanmen Chop Son". Another content is a large number of sentimental stories describing the separation of Yang Jiajiang's flesh and blood in the war. For example, Zhao Zhao Bubei, Wutai Xiong Hui, Hongyang Cave, Taijun Temple and Shiro Visiting Mother. Almost all of these operas are lyric operas, and the jargon of Beijing opera is called "singing operas". Especially, plays like "Miracles Hit the Monument" (also known as "Li Lingbei") are about the death of Yang Jiye. In traditional stories, it is the core plot of Yang Jiajiang's "loyalty to the country". But in Beijing opera, the core of this drama is to describe and express the grief and despair of the separation of flesh and blood.
Before Yang Jiye was killed by "Li Lingbei", he fell into both military and spiritual despair. In the battle, he was framed by his boss Pan Hong and trapped in two wolf mountains by Liao soldiers. "There is no food and grass inside and no reinforcements outside", which makes the general in a desperate situation militarily. When he was hungry and cold, he dreamed that his son who was seeking help was covered in blood and came to dream, which led to his mental breakdown. The main content of this play is to express Yang Jiye's despair and pain with beautiful and moving singing music.
Another example is the play "Shiro Visiting Mother". The fourth son, Yang Yanhui, was captured in the battle and changed his name. He became the princess of Liao. This plot is the same as the novel. But later stories, novels and plays are very different. In the novel, Yang Silang almost became a spy of Song Jun, and finally defeated the Liao army with the internal cooperation of Song Jun. Obviously, Yang Silang remains a loyal image of serving the country. But Yang Silang in the Beijing Opera "Shiro Visiting Mother" is another image. The play began when the Song and Liao armies were preparing for a decisive battle. However, none of the whole play is about the war between the two sides. Yang Silang secretly came from Liao Ying to visit his mother in Songying. He bid farewell to his relatives from Song Ying and returned to his wife in a foreign land, singing and telling the pain of separation brought by the war to these two deformed families. It must be pointed out that in Beijing Opera, there is no scene of Yang Jiajiang fighting on the battlefield. Not to mention Shao of Zhao, who just moved out of the palace. Other works, such as Iron Flag Array, Dugu Gong and Cui Dai, have been performed by famous actors, but none of them can be handed down. About the pain of separation and the love of flesh and blood, the play "Shiro Visiting Mother" has been played for a long time and has been passed down to this day. If we want to find the reason, the main reason is the success in artistic form. I'm afraid these plays clearly and strongly express the common people's aversion to cruel war and their desire for a peaceful and stable life. The reason why Peking Opera can become a widely circulated art is precisely because its stories are full of secular human feelings.
Beijing opera is a kind of civilian art.
Beijing opera is a popular art. The scripts of traditional Peking Opera are written by artists who are proficient in literature and ink painting. Later, although many literati became Peking Opera artists, in the face of a large number of illiterate or semi-illiterate audiences in the theater, almost all their scripts were easy to understand. The narrative style of Beijing Opera is always straightforward. All the plots and characters related to the story, big or small, should be explained one by one, and sometimes repeatedly. Generally speaking, there won't be a story in a Beijing opera script that an audience with normal intelligence can't understand, even if he doesn't know a word. Strangely, however, today's audiences often complain that they can't understand Beijing opera. In fact, this reason is not in the script of Beijing opera, but because of the changes in stage performances and audience cultural background today.
Many Beijing operas are series at first, and the jargon is "Liantai Benxi" or "Benxi". There are often more than a dozen such plays, and it takes ten days or even months to perform the whole play, so it is impossible to perform it often. Therefore, the troupe always selects some of the most wonderful and attractive plays and often performs them. The fragment of this kind of play is called "passbook play" in jargon. The carefully selected passbook stories in the whole play naturally have a head and a tail, or even a headless tail. But in the past, audiences were familiar with all the stories of these dramas, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Yang Jiajiang, The Journey to the West, Yue Fei, Shi Gong 'an and Bao Gong, which were all familiar stories in the past. The audience can easily understand a story from them. Today's audience lacks this kind of cultural preparation, so it is not easy to understand opera. This kind of obstacle only needs a little knowledge and some auxiliary materials, and it can be easily got rid of.