Main
» Home
Journals
» Entry #1
» Entry #2
» Entry #3
» Entry #4
East Asian Art
» Peking Opera
» Japanese Fans
» Ikebana
» Bunraku
» Cheo Theatre
» Dzo
» That Luang
Links
Contact Info
» E-mail Me
The Peking Opera in Beijing
The Peking opera is a type of theater that combines stylized action, singing, dialogue, mime, acrobatic fighting and dancing to interpret a story or depict different characters and their feelings of gladness, anger, sorrow, happiness, surprise, fear and sadness. In Peking opera there are four main types of roles: sheng (male) dan (young female), jing( painted face,male), and chou (clown, male or female). The characters may be loyal or treacherous, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, their images being vividly manifested. "The repertoire of Peking opera is mainly engaged in fairy tales of preceding dynasties, important historical events, emperors, ministers and generals, geniuses and great beauties, from the ancient times to Yao, Shun, Yu, the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period and the dynasties of Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing. "
The music of Peking opera is of harmonious rhythms and is graceful and pleasing to the ears. The melody can be classified into two groups: "Xipi" and "erhong", guiding pattern, original pattern, slow pattern, quick pattern, desultary pattern being their chief patterns. The performance is accompanied by a tune played on wind instruments, percussion instruments and stringed instruments, the chief musical instruments are the jinghu (a two-stringed bowed instrument with a high register), the yueqin( a four-stringed plucked instrument with a full-moon-shaped sound box), the Sanxian( a three-stringed plucked instrument), the suona horn, the flute drum, the big-gong, the cymbals, the small-gong, and etc.
The costumes in Peking opera are graceful, bold, elegant and wonderful. Most of the costumes are handmade with the embroidery patterns of traditional Chinese designs giving it an expensive and delicate look. As you can imagine they turn out to be beautifult and look quite authentic. Expcept maybe for the bold combinations of colors that make the actors standout and help depict the type of character they are.
Peking Opera
