Chinese Opera

Chinese Opera is considered to be a unique and highest example of an entire theater that requires the most profound refinement of skills in singing, acting, characterization, movement, dance and acrobatics. This art form is a valuable part of Chinese culture. Among Chinese Opera : Beijing Opera, Sichuan Opera , Tibetan Opera present their own unique charms and cultural influence

Introduction of Chinese Opera

Chinese opera is mainly composed of three different art forms: folk song and dance, rap and burlesque. It originated from the original song and dance, is a long history of comprehensive stage art style. Through the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty and Jin Dynasty, a relatively complete opera art was formed. It is composed of literature, music, dance, fine arts, martial arts, acrobatics and performing arts. It is characterized by the convergence of many art forms into one standard, which reflects their individual personalities in the common nature. Chinese Opera, together with Greek Tragedy and Comedy and Indian Brahman Opera, is known as the world's three ancient opera cultures. After a long period of development and evolution, a Chinese Opera garden of hundreds of flowers has been gradually formed with five opera types of "Peking Opera, Yue Opera, Huangmei Opera, Pingju Opera and Henan Opera" as the core.

Artistic Features

Comprehensiveness, virtuality and formality are the main artistic features of Chinese Opera. These characteristics, condensing the esthetics thought essence of Chinese traditional culture, constitute the unique drama view, make Chinese drama shine its unique artistic brilliance on the big stage of world drama culture.

Opera Music

Opera music is a genre of Han folk music. It is one of the important artistic means to express the thoughts and feelings of the characters, depict the characters' characters, and enhance the stage atmosphere in the opera art.  Derived from folk songs, folk musical theater, dance, instrumental music and other musical components, is an important part of the Han folk music. This kind of dramatic music has its own unique structure, expression and artistic skills, and has a strong national artistic style. From the perspective of production-music, opera belongs to the musical drama of the Chinese people. It is distinct from the musical tradition of western operas and their composers. Chinese Opera music has folk and procedural characteristics.

Opera Facial Makeup

Generally speaking, makeup of "Sheng", "Dan", is slightly to use powder to achieve the effect of vignette change. This kind of makeup is called "Jun Dress Up". "Sheng", "Dan" line character's facial makeup, no matter how many characters, is about the same. "Sheng", "Dan" character personality, is mainly showed by the acting and clothing and other aspects of performance.

Face makeup, is mainly used for the "Jing", "Chou", with exaggerated strong colors and infinite changes in line to change the actor's true colors.

The deformation of opera mask is bold and exaggerated, but the art of facial makeup is very methodical, and its points, lines, colors and shapes are regularly organized into decorative patterns. Thus, various forms and rules of opera facial makeup are produced, which is to say, a certain formula is formed.

Form

Despite having a common ancestor, there are more than 300 different forms of Chinese opera, all named after their birthplace. These forms can often be distinguished by the use of local dialects and unique "melodies". Beijing Opera is considered the most elegant by most people. There are Pingju, Kunqu Opera, Shaoxing, Henan, Sichuan, Shanxi, Huangmei Opera, Flower Drum and Yangko. Some minority groups in China have some their own local operas.