Ru
EnZhang Chen
Lyrical opera in the Chinese musical theatre of the 20th century: the pages of the genre history
The article is devoted to the phenomenon of lyrical opera, which occupies a special place in the Chinese musical theatre of the 20th – early 21st century. For the first time in musicology, the author attempts to examine the sources, and path of its formation, and the main stages of development. Some regional models of traditional Chinese drama have been identified as the origins and most ancient “pretexts” of the genre (the artistic originality of Shaoxing Yue opera – yueju – is emphasized). The importance of female images in them is emphasized, and their typology is touched upon. In the musical culture of the 20th century, the early examples of “pro-Western” Chinese opera (works by A. Avshalomov) are mentioned. The genres that appeared in the 1940s and 1950s are particularly highlighted: “revolutionary” and “folk” operas, in which a new system of female images was formed and the type of xin niuxin (“new femininity”) appeared as its representative. His inherent figurative hypostases (“hardness and softness”: tenderness, sincerity – courage, heroism) will become the basis for the development of a multidimensional characterization of opera heroines in the subsequent stages of the development of lyrical opera. From the works of the mid-20th century – the legendary “Gray-Haired Girl”, “The Wedding of Xiao Erhei”, “Liu Hulan”, the author proceeds to the first classical examples of the genre: the operas “Sorrow for the Departed” by Shi Guannan and “Steppe” by Jing Xiang. Appearing in the 1980s, they formed the genre canons of lyrical opera based on the synthesis of national and Western traditions (G. Verdi, G. Puccini, Verismo, P. Tchaikovsky). In the 1990s and 2000s and at the present stage in the works of Bright Sheng, Jing Xiang, Zhang Qianyi, the development of the genre is distinguished, on the one hand, by its multidirectional nature (in the choice of plots and genre-style models). On the other hand, it is characterized by an evolutionary transformations: from lyrical drama to psychological tragedy, which is characterized by the aggravation of conflict, the complexity of images, and the complication of musical stylistics through the use of Western avant-garde techniques while following the course of preserving national identity.
Key words
Chinese lyrical opera, Yue opera (yueju), synthesis of national and Western musical traditions, “Sorrow for the Departed” by Shi Guangnan, “Steppe” by Jing Xiang, “Orchid Flower” by Zhang Qianyi, Bright Sheng.
For citation
Zhang Chen. Lyrical opera in the Chinese musical theatre of the 20th century: the pages of the genre history. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2025. No. 2. Pp. 26–35.
