Beijing Opera | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Widely considered the finest of China's varied opera traditions, Beijing Opera (jingxi) combines music, song, speech, mime, dance and acrobatics, exciting spectacle, and subtle beauty. Divided into two basic styles, civil plays mainly concerned with love and martial plays that enact spectacular battle scenes, its subject matter is drawn from historical and mythical tales and classic novels.

Characters depict defined role types such as the clown, the "painted face" warrior, the "flowery" woman, and the martial woman. Each role has its own style of movement, voice, costume, and makeup—the acrobatics of the clown; the platform boots and confident strides of the warrior; the long, flowing "water sleeve" of the "dark-clothed" modest woman. The stage is largely bare, so mime is central to its art.

Music is crucial in the opera; in Chinese they say listen to opera (tingxi) not watch. A drummer directs the action on stage and leads a group of gongs and cymbals, which opens the action with a brilliant and earsplitting set. The actors move to the beats of the drum, and each character and type of action is accompanied by a set percussion piece, one for the warrior's entrance, one for riding a horse, and so on. The two-stringed fiddle is the most important melodic instrument, used especially to accompany the singing. Other instruments include a larger fiddle, plucked lutes, flute, and occasionally shawms in the martial plays.

The opera developed comparatively late in nineteenth-century Beijing, but it draws on older forms such as the classical southern kunqu opera and regional musical styles—the lively xipi and more sedate erhuang. Traditionally young boys were sold into the operatic profession and given rigorous training in its exacting arts. These boys, especially those trained in the female roles (women began to perform on stage only in the 1930s), were often prostituted to rich opera enthusiasts. Into the late nineteenth century, families of star performers arose, and the Empress Dowager even had an opera stage constructed in the Forbidden City. However, performers never shook off their dubious societal reputation. After 1949, Beijing Opera was formalized as a national art, and performers were organized into state schools and troupes. During the Cultural Revolution the notorious revolutionary Model Operas were widely promoted, while the traditional plays were banned. Beijing Opera's popularity has waned in modernizing China, but groups of amateur enthusiasts still meet in town parks to sing excerpts from the plays.

Music—China

Mackerras, Colin. (1997) Peking Opera. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wichmann, Elizabeth. (1991) Listening to Theatre: The Aural Dimensions of Beijing Opera. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

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