![A jingxi (Peking opera) troupe performing a scene from …[Credits : © Wu Gang/Liaison International]](/terngr/novelty-https-web.archive.org/web/20080503130136im_/http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/04/7504-003.gif "A jingxi (Peking opera) troupe performing a scene from …[Credits : © Wu Gang/Liaison International]")
popular Chinese theatrical form that developed in the mid-19th century. It incorporated elements of huidiao from Anhui, dandiao from Hubei, and kunqu, the traditional opera that had predominated since the 14th century. Sung in Mandarin, the dialect of Beijing (Peking) and of the traditional elite, the jingxi musical verse plays came to be performed throughout China, although most provinces and many major cities developed their own operatic variants using local dialect.
![A jingxi troupe performing a scene from …[Credits : © Wu Gang/Liaison International]](/terngr/novelty-https-web.archive.org/web/20080503130136im_/http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/10/110-003.gif "A jingxi troupe performing a scene from …[Credits : © Wu Gang/Liaison International]")
Jingxi is highly conventionalized. The attitudes of individual characters are encoded in traditional steps, postures, and arm movements. The actors and actresses wear elaborate face paint to show the characters they play. Acrobatic movements are frequently used to suggest violent action. Accompaniment is provided by a small orchestra of stringed and wind instruments, wooden clappers, and a small drum. Interludes of spoken narration permit singers to rest periodically during the characteristically lengthy performances. Jingxi traditionally employed an all-male cast with female impersonators, but in the late 20th century it expanded its scope to admit female actors. The most renowned jingxi performer was Mei Lanfang, who played mostly female roles; he introduced the art form to an international audience by touring in Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
Since the 1970s, several jingxi troupes have performed in the West. The acclaimed film Bawang bieji (1993; Farewell My Concubine) features two main characters who are jingxi actors.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Traditional jingxi (Peking opera)—with its elaborate and stylized costumes and makeup, cacophonous music, and spectacular dance and acrobatic routines—has been revived, after an attempt during the Cultural Revolution to adapt the form to modern revolutionary themes. The opera has great appeal for older people but less for the young, who...
...low, sensual sounds to high and nasal falsettos. For the rest of the materials concerning theatre music, it is best to turn to the primary music-drama form since the 18th century, Peking opera (ching-hsi or ching-chü).
in musical performance: China and Japan )...most spectacular of non-Western performance traditions is Chinese opera, in which singers, acrobats, costumes, scenery, and instruments are combined in the creation of a highly varied work of art. Peking opera uses two basic kinds of instrumentation: for military scenes a battery of drums, gongs, and cymbals with a kind of oboe playing the melody; for the more frequent domestic scenes a wider...
Ching-hsi or ching-chü (Peking opera) came into being over a period of several decades at the end of the 18th century, during the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1911/12). In the wake of the Taiping Rebellion, k’un-ch’ü troupes resident in Peking returned to their homes in the south. Their places in Peking’s theatres were quickly taken by opera troupes from the...
In music, the most notable development of the dynasty probably was the development of jingxi, or Peking opera, over several decades at the end of the 18th century. It was an amalgam of several regional music-theatre traditions that employed significantly increased instrumental accompaniment, adding to flute, plucked lute, and clappers, several drums, a...
The classical Peking opera (ching-hsi) in China is a form of musical theatre in which music is one among several elements rather than a governing factor, as in Western opera. The vocal writing alternates between styles broadly equivalent to recitative and song, distinguished by a forced high falsetto tone required from the male singers. A less stylized variety is the all-female...
Chinese two-stringed fiddle that is the principal melodic instrument in jingxi (Peking opera) ensembles. The smallest (and therefore highest-pitched) of the Chinese spike fiddles (huqin), the jinghu is about 50 cm (20 inches) in length. Its body is a bamboo tube, covered at...
...yueqin was invented, according to tradition, during the Jin dynasty, between about ad 265 and 420. The instrument is often included in jingxi (folk opera) orchestras. It is also used as a solo instrument.
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popular Chinese theatrical form that developed in the mid-19th century. It incorporated elements of huidiao from Anhui, dandiao from Hubei, and kunqu, the traditional opera that had predominated since the 14th century. Sung in Mandarin, the dialect of Beijing (Peking) and of the traditional elite, the jingxi musical verse plays came to be performed throughout China, although most provinces and many major cities developed their own operatic variants using local dialect.
Jingxi is highly conventionalized. The attitudes of individual characters are encoded in traditional steps, postures, and arm movements. The actors and actresses wear elaborate face paint to show the characters they play. Acrobatic movements are frequently used to suggest violent action. Accompaniment is provided by a small orchestra of stringed and wind instruments, wooden clappers, and a small drum. Interludes of spoken narration permit singers to rest periodically during the characteristically lengthy performances. Jingxi traditionally employed an all-male cast with female impersonators, but in the late 20th century it expanded its scope to admit female actors. The most renowned jingxi performer was Mei Lanfang, who played mostly female roles; he introduced the art form to an international audience by touring in Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
Since the 1970s, several jingxi troupes have performed in the West. The acclaimed film Bawang bieji (1993; Farewell My Concubine) features two main characters who are jingxi actors.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
On his return to China, Qi met Mei Lanfang, who was then emerging as one of China’s greatest actors. The two combined talents, with Mei executing Qi’s new dramas, which were based on historical and legendary sources. Among the many classical plays Qi adapted was Fenghuanchao (Homecoming of a Phoenix; also translated as Snow...
...system. Many plays first staged as Peking opera are dramatizations of the war novel San-kuo chih yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), written in the 14th century by Lo Kuan-chung. Mei Lanfang, the most famous performer of ching-hsi female roles in the 20th century, introduced a number of these highly active military plays into the repertoire. K’un-ch’ü...
in theatre: China )...of opera that she had a triple-deck stage (representing heaven, hell, and earth) constructed in the summer palace at Peking. The most important individual in Chinese theatre of the 20th century, Mei Lan-fang, an actor and producer, was the first to apply scholarship in reviving ancient masterpieces and opera forms.
...an all-male cast with female impersonators, but in the late 20th century it expanded its scope to admit female actors. The most renowned jingxi performer was Mei Lanfang, who played mostly female roles; he introduced the art form to an international audience by touring in Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
As the most elegant and artistic genre of traditional Chinese drama, kunqu has long been appreciated by a well-educated audience. In 1919 Mei Lanfang and Han Shichang, renowned performers of kunqu, traveled to Japan to give performances. In the 1930s Mei performed kunqu in the...
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a drama set to music and made up of vocal pieces with orchestral accompaniment and with orchestral overtures and interludes. In some operas, such as those by Richard Wagner, the music is continuous throughout an act; in others, it is broken up either by recitative (which is more like sung speech) or by dialogue. This article focuses on opera in the Western tradition. For an overview of opera in East Asia (particularly China), see East Asian arts: Dance and theatre; see also short entries on specific forms of Chinese opera, such as chuanqi; jingxi; kunqu; zaju; and nanxi.
The English word opera is an abbreviation of the Italian phrase opera in musica (“work in music”). It names a theatrical form consisting of a dramatic text (libretto, or “little book”) combined with music, usually singing with instrumental accompaniment. Besides solo, ensemble, and choral singers and a group of instrumentalists, the forces performing opera since its inception have often included dancers. A complex, often costly variety of musicodramatic entertainment, opera has attracted audiences for nearly five centuries. Although its supporters have greatly outnumbered its detractors, it has been the target of intense criticism.
Charles de Saint-Évremond, a French man of letters in the 17th century, called it
a bizarre thing consisting of poetry in music, in which the poet and the composer, equally standing in each other’s way, go to endless trouble to produce a wretched result.
The 18th-century English statesman and writer Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son:
As for operas, they are essentially too absurd and extravagant to mention. I look upon them as a magic scene contrived to please the eyes and the ears at the expense of the...
(1644–1911/12), the last of the imperial dynasties of China. Under the Qing the territory of the empire grew to treble its size under the preceding Ming dynasty, the population grew from some 150 million to 450 million, many of the non-Chinese minorities within the empire were Sinicized, and an integrated national economy was established.
The Qing dynasty was first established in 1636 by the Manchus to designate their regime in Manchuria (now the Northeast region of China). In 1644 the Chinese capital at Beijing was captured by the bandit leader Li Zicheng, and desperate Ming dynasty officials called on the Manchus for aid. The Manchus took advantage of the opportunity to seize the capital and establish their own dynasty in China. By adopting the Ming form of government and continuing to employ Ming officials, the Manchus pacified the Chinese population. To guarantee Manchu control over the administration, however, the Qing made certain that half the higher level officials were Manchus. Chinese military leaders who surrendered were given ranks of nobility, and troops were organized into the Lüying, or Army of the Green Standard, which was garrisoned throughout the country to guard against local rebellions. The regular Manchu Banner System troops (Qibing, or Baqi) were kept at the capital and in a few selected strategic spots throughout the country.
Under the emperor Kangxi (reigned 1661–1722) the Manchus forced the Russians to abandon their fort at Albazin, located along the Manchurian border on the Amur River. In 1689 a treaty was concluded with Russia at Nerchinsk demarcating the northern extent of the Manchurian boundary at the Argun River. Over the next 40 years the Dzungar Mongols were defeated, and the empire was extended to include Outer Mongolia, Tibet, Dzungaria, Turkistan, and Nepal. Under the two emperors...
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Confucius (551–479 bc) emphasized the role of aesthetic enjoyment in moral and political education, and, like his near contemporary Plato, was suspicious of the power of art to awaken frenzied and distracted feelings. Music must be stately and dignified, contributing to the inner harmony that is the foundation of good behaviour, and all art is at its noblest when incorporated into the...
A form of art collecting existed in the earliest civilizations—Egypt, Babylonia, China, and India—as arrays of precious objects and artworks stored in temples, tombs, and sanctuaries, as well as in the palaces and treasuries of kings. Such collections frequently displayed booty taken from conquered peoples and served to exalt the power and glory of a king or a priestly caste, rather...
Accounts of automatons in China date from as early as the 3rd century bc, during the Han dynasty, when a mechanical orchestra was made for the Emperor. By the Sui dynasty, in the 6th and 7th centuries ad, automatons had become widespread, and a book entitled the Shui shih t’u Ching (“Book of Hydraulic Elegancies”) was published. In the T’ang period, from the 7th to the...
China
type of ancient Chinese bronze vessel used to contain food. The dou is usually a circular bowl supported on a short stem rising from a flaring base. The rim has two ring-shaped handles at opposite sides of the bowl, and another shallow bowl serves as a lid.
type of Chinese bronze vessel produced in the late Zhou dynasty (c. 600–256/255 bc), it was a food container consisting of two bowls—each supported on three legs—that, when placed together, formed a sphere. The dui usually had two loop handles on either side of the rim of each bowl. The decoration of the ...
