Siong Leng Musical Association will be staging a Liyuan opera titled "Li Yaxian" at the Esplanade Recital Studio next month. This will be the association's first full-length Liyuan opera performance for over a decade.
The Liyuan opera has got the reputation of being Chinese opera's living heritage as it has got a long history of 800 years, and it was even said that the ways huadans in Liyuan opera moved and walked were actually inspired by how women really walked back in the Ming dynasty. The repertoire for Liyuan opera is also one of the rarest; some of the scripts dates back to the era of Song dynasty's "Zaju" opera and had already been extinct in other opera genres.
"Li Yaxian" is one of the most popular shows that are still being performed in Liyuan opera. It tells the story of a talented scholar, Zheng Yuanhe, who fell in love with a beautiful courtesan named Li Yaxian while on his way to sit for the imperial examinations. In order to get close to this beauty, Yuanhe decided to step into the "forbidden zone" - the brothel which Yaxian lived in. Brothel owner Madame Li knew this was a good opportunity to cheat Yuanhe of his money, so she decided to bring the couple together. After neglecting his studies and having used up all his money, the heartless Madame Li had Yuanhe chased out, and Yaxian used her own money to redeem herself to go in search of Yuanhe.
For Siong Leng's performance, however, there was a slight change to the script, for now, the love story of Zheng Yuanhe and Li Yaxian would be unfold through the camera lens of a modern-day photographer. That makes me curious over one point: this performance has been introduced as a "Liyuan opera", but is it going to be really a pure Liyuan opera, for it seems that there is a bit of contemporary drama essence involved. My guess is that it could be something like "Titoudao", a fusion of contemporary drama with authentic Chinese opera, just that in this case, the dosage of Liyuan opera would be much stronger, and lesser concentration on contemporary drama (maybe 10% or lesser). If that is the case, labelling this show as "Liyuan opera" might be a bit misleading, for those who is more into watching "authentic" Chinese opera. Nevertheless, I still feel that this show sounds interesting, and should be a good performance to catch.
"Li Yaxian" is part of the "Chinese opera delights" series by the Esplanade, and shall be staged on 11 August 2007, 3pm and 8pm, at the Esplanade Ricital Studio. Tickets are priced at $35 (senior citizens, NSF and students enjoy a concession price of $26), and is available at SISTIC.
4 comments:
Thanks AC for your advertisement! Hee hee... you are right in your article but one point is not so accurate. That is we performed our last full length show in 2002. It's half a decade ago..:P
Also, just to answer some of your questions. The opera parts are much stronger than the contemporary drama parts as Esplanade requested us to do a Chinese opera, not drama. So we cannot focus too much on drama. There will be only 5 scenes in this performance tho. Kick ball, Lian hua luo, Hu ru, hui rong and ju men. These 5 scenes will last about 1hr 15 min, the drama parts will last about 15-20 minutes. So the whole show is about 1.5hrs without intermission (i dunno if there is intermission or not).
The liyuan opera parts are ORIGINAL. We only took away some lines to make them shorter but the opera performance parts are still original, with the original music and stage props etc. In between the scenes, the photographer will talk. The purpose of the photographer is just to provide a guide for audience to what the show is about and introduce liyuan opera to audience.
Stress... Heard a lot of VIPs are coming. I very stress.
I didn't know you guys did one in 2002! But anyway, back to "Li Ya Xian", what I meant was that I can't really consider this a "true opera" because it is more of a fusion of Chinese opera with contemporary drama, even though the contemporary drama part is very little. Maybe "experimental opera" or "drama opera"
Don't be too stressed la... at least the VIPs would not be watching you at arm distance... heh... =P
Anyway I'll be going, hopefully I can make it for the pre-performance talk too..
You are coming to watch ah?? night one or afternoon one? I didn't jio anybody to watch tho... because not many ppl can appreciate our slow mo performance and slow mo singing (in comparison to GZX).
Your memory so bad huh... you forgot I like to watch Liyuan opera one meh? Heh... I'm going for the afternoon one most likely, as I got to work at night
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