Original title: Lantern Festival drama and Lantern Festival drama
The Lantern Festival, also known as the Lantern Festival and Lantern Festival, falls on the first full moon day of the lunar calendar, which is the first full moon day of the New Year. But on the Lantern Festival, people often focus not on the “moon” but on the “lantern”. The Lantern Festival with lanterns and colorful decorations, walking on the streets, watching lanterns, guessing riddles, watching fireworks, playing dragon lanterns and lion dances, etc., forms the collective memory of everyone. When we look back at my country’s traditional Lantern Festival customs, we will find that among the many celebration activities, acting and watching plays occupy an important place.
As far as recent times are concerned, according to the seasons of the year, the Qing palace dramas are the most regular, and each has its own special drama. During the Qianlong period, there were 20 kinds of Shangyuan Festival operas recorded in the imperial manuscript “Jie Jie Hao Yin”, including “Playing with Lanterns and Walking on the Bridge”, “Touching the Nails and Stepping on the Moon”, “Fu Xi You Tong”, “Five Ancestors Advent the Gods”, “Three Yuan Blessings”, “Sincerely Offering Lanterns”, etc., the Shangyuan Festival response dramas compiled by researchers from relevant archives of the Qing Dynasty include “The Order of the Eastern Emperor”, “Purple Gu’s Fortune”, “Ten Thousand Flowers Prosper”, etc. Before and after the Shangyuan Festival, most of the reception banquet plays for the clan banquets are “Celebration of the Stars” and “Lights and Moonlight”, and most of the reception banquet plays for the courtiers’ banquets are “Sea Calm Waves” and “Taiping Wang Hui”. Show time is shorter. In addition to festival plays and banquet plays with a strong sense of ritual, music, and rituals, plays with folk interest will also be performed before and after the Shangyuan Festival. For example, on the 16th day of the first lunar month in the ninth year of Xianfeng’s reign, “Donghuang Bu Ling” was performed as the theme. It opens with “Little Sister”, “Eating Tea”, “Kidnapped” and “Rouge Snow”, and finally ends with “Hanging Lantern Pre-Celebration”, among which “Little Sister”, “Eating Tea” and “Rouge Snow” are the most important ones. In describing human feelings, it is more lifelike. There were also “lantern opera” and “fire opera” performances before and after the Shangyuan Festival in the palace. The former mainly entertained with lanterns, with singing and dancing but no plot. The titles include “The Lamp of Ten Thousand Years of Prosperity and Fortune” and “The Lamp of Ten Thousand Years of Good Luck”. “Fu Lu Shou Lantern” and so on, there are many participants and types of lanterns; the latter mainly enjoys fireworks, with titles such as “Thousand-leaf Lotus”, “Wanguo Le Spring Terrace”, “Peace in the World”, “Ten Thousand Lanterns”, etc., which are dazzling. , amazing.
On the folk side, the Lantern Festival mainly features lantern plays as part of the occasion. The main early performances include “Luoyang Bridge”, “Daxiang Mountain”, “Bullfighting Palace”, etc. “Luoyang Bridge” interprets the story of Cai Xiangshe’s golden bridge construction. Except for a piece of singing before Xia Dehai went to the sea, the plot can be added or subtracted at will. Later performances mostly used lanterns, role reversal, and the thirty-six lines of crossing the bridge to create new ones. . “Daxiangshan” interprets the story of Guanyin’s attainment of enlightenment. The play presents heaven, earth, and underworld, with many actors on stage, and is also won by the illumination of cut lanterns. “Bullfighting Palace” interprets fairy tales and is full of laughter. During the Guangxu period, various theaters in Shanghai competed for performances. In 1910, “Picture Daily” published “Shanghai New Year’s Phenomenon: Watching the Lantern Show” wrote: “Let’s watch the lanterns. Visiting the theater, the Lantern Festival has a new arrangement of lantern dramas. The play is the lanterns and the play, and it is not clear whether it is the lantern or the play. The famous “Bullfighting Palace” is very different in the new stage. The stilts are added to the magic, and it is the most exquisite workmanship. “Luoyang Bridge” is a good show. There are many lights and many changes. Passing on the thirty-six-row bridge makes people laugh. Fengyangpo is laughing. Recently, the color show has been renovated. Even without lights, it is magical. There are colors and lanterns, and the gods are more full and discerning. You are so busy that you are disturbing the people in the seat.” This shows the prosperity of the time. “Luoyang Bridge” and “Daxiangshan” are mainly performed by Kunming Troupe, while “Bullfighting Palace” is mostly performed by Beijing Troupe. Other festive lantern shows include “Fire Cloud Cave”, “Nine Lotus Lanterns”, “Wang Huhu Robbery”, etc.
The rise of government-sponsored scenery has had an impact on lantern operas. The popularity of old Lantern Festival operas will also cause aesthetic fatigue among the audience. During the Lantern Festival in 1920, “Mrs. Shangyuan” premiered at the Xinming Theater. This new large-scale lantern song and dance drama has an impressive lineup, with Mei Lanfang as Mrs. Shangyuan, Chen Delin as the Queen Mother of the West, Wang Fengqing as Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and Jiang Miaoxiang. Starring as Dongfang Shuo, Rong Diexian as Guo Mixiang, Yao Yufu as Dong Shuangcheng, Cheng Yanqiu as Xu Feiqiong, Liu Fenglin as Wang Zideng, and Cheng Lianxi as Faying. Qi Rushan believes that the play has four conditions for success: first, the roles of the famous actors are appropriately assigned, and each has a large number of singing roles, which satisfies the theater connoisseur; second, the costumes and details are carefully thought out, such as Mrs. Shangyuan’s glass sticks and lanterns and ceremonial flags. The flag is popular among female audiences; the third is a specially made animal form, with Fa Ying and others dancing in animal form and performing body movements, which is very attractive to children; the fourth is the addition of four Kunqu opera pieces, accompanied by solo dances and group dances, which are popular with older audiences. When “Madame Shangyuan” premiered, she went to Shanghai with Mei Lanfang and others to perform, and the “whisk dance” in the play was made into movies twice. Another Lantern Festival drama starring Mei Lanfang is “Spring Lantern Riddles”, adapted from Ruan Dacheng’s “Spring Lantern Riddles” legend. The arias of the play have been recorded by Hong Kong New Music, Great Wall, Greater China and other record companies. It can be seen that the arias are wonderful, but the whole play has different clues and complicated performances, so there were not many performances later. Other operas that have been performed by famous Peking Opera actors during the Lantern Festival include “Xue Gang Makes a Trouble with the Lanterns” (Yang Xiaolou), “The Mystery of the Lantern Festival” (Xun Huisheng), “Viewing the Lanterns on Lantern Night” (Shang Xiaoyun), “Shang Yuan Bao Mirror” “(Zhu Qinxin), “Rouge Folds”, “Spring and Autumn Brush” (Ma Lianliang), “Dragon Robe” (Hao Shoushen), “Seven Heroes Making Lanterns” (Li Wanchun), etc.
The Lantern Festival is deeply popular in traditional Chinese society. The fateful meeting of young men and women on the night of the Lantern Festival is an important part of the “talents and beauties” in classical operas. This is the case with “The Story of Xiao”, “The Story of Purple Hairpin”, “The Story of Red Pear”, “The Story of Golden Bird”, “The Story of Lijing”, “Spring Lantern Riddle”, etc. Some researchers pointed out that there are Lantern Festival love dramas and Lantern Festival farces in classical operas. Most of the Lantern Festival farces are Water Margin operas, such as “Yizhang Qing Lantern Festival” and “Xiao Li Guangdao Lantern Festival Night” and so on. In fact, from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, operas such as “Liu Wenlong”, “The Orphan of Zhao Revenge”, “Princess Lechang Reunion”, “The Story of Holly”, “The Story of Dragon Paste” and “The Peach Blossom Fan” also introduced the background of the Lantern Festival. If literati legends focus on the emphasis on “emotion” by festival images, folk operas are mostly devoted to the description of “objects” and the display of “techniques”, such as Huangmei Opera “Couple Watching Lanterns” and Mao Opera “Zhao Meirong Watching Lanterns” , the Yue Opera “Chasing the Fish”, the Shanghai Opera “Xu Azeng Comes Out of the Lantern”, etc., all have large sections describing “lanterns”. The Quanzhou string puppet show “Lantern Festival” and the southern Fujian bag puppet show “Daming Mansion” all feature Liangshan heroes. Jianghu artists came to the city to rescue Lu Junyi during the Lantern Festival. The performance included various dance, juggling, martial arts and other technical performances.
The Lantern Festival is a traditional festival with a long history in my country, and festival performances are also endless. Regarding the current Lantern Festival operas, from the perspective of Peking Opera, most of the above-mentioned plays that were once sensational have not been seen on the stage for a long time. This is related to the high dependence between the plays and the creators and the changes in performance styles. At the Lantern Festival Opera Gala produced by China Central Radio and Television in 2021, Shi Yihong of the Shanghai Peking Opera Theater and others performed a segment of “Lady Shangyuan”. The overall design and completion quality of the performance reflected the ingenuity and sincerity of the planners and creators. It also provides a better case for exploring the contemporary significance of traditional culture. However, in some local operas, many operas closely following the theme of the Lantern Festival are performed frequently. In recent years, the Fujian Provincial Liyuan Opera Inheritance Center has arranged operas for the festival during the Lantern Festival performance week, including “Chen Sanwuniang” and “Rouge Story”. “Chen Sanwuniang” is a drama that interprets the joys and sorrows of life and shows local culture and social customs. Representative repertoires and repertoires are not only performed every year, but are even taken to the streets during festivals by young people, providing the public with an immersive experience of playing in the festival and the festival in the play, and finding new and effective ways for the dissemination and popularization of intangible cultural heritage opera. path.
(Zhang Jing, the author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Opera, China Academy of Arts)
