Southern Opera in Song and Yuan Dynasties came into being at the end of Northern Song Dynasty and the beginning of Southern Song Dynasty. Wenzhou, Zhejiang, Quanzhou, Fujian and Fuzhou are the formative periods of Peking Opera. Southern Opera is an early mature form of opera in China. It combines singing, dancing, reciting and learning, and performs a complete story. Due to the twists and turns of the story, the script is generally longer, which is several times that of the Northern Opera. It uses southern tunes, and there are no strict rules on rhythm and palace tune. Its singing methods are varied, including solo, duet, rotation and chorus. Musical instruments are mainly drums. Because the southern accent and the northern accent are different, the two styles are quite different.

Qian Nanyang got 238 kinds of Song and Yuan operas in "An Introduction to Traditional Chinese Opera", most of which were works of the Yuan Dynasty, but in fact it was more than that. Among these operas, only Zhang Xie's No.1 Scholar (generally considered to be a Southern Song Dynasty work), The Son of a Wrong Official, Little Sun Tu, Pipa Story, The Story of the White Rabbit, The Story of Chai Jing, The Moon Pavilion, The Story of Killing Dogs, etc. Yuan Zaju is also called Beiqu Zaju. Yuan Zaju first appeared in Hebei Pingzhen and Shanxi Pingyang at the end of Jin Dynasty. Yuan Zaju was popular in the Yuan Dynasty, which was the first golden age of China opera. It has reached a very high literary level, so that in terms of poetic style alone, the ancients have long called Tang poetry, Song ci and Yuan qu together.

Wang Guowei said: Tang poetry, Song lyrics and Yuan songs are all so-called literature of a generation. Yuan Zaju has achieved the same lofty status as Tang Poetry and Song Poetry, and its outstanding achievements are mainly manifested in its profound ideological content and extremely high artistic attainments.

Yuan Zaju has a wide range of themes, rich and profound contents, and strong reality and militancy. In order to avoid literary disasters, writers of Yuan Zaju often use historical legends and stories to reflect reality, and those directly drawn from real life are often painted with a protective color of historical legends. However, many works vividly show the broad outlook of life in the Yuan Dynasty, with a strong sense of the times and important practical significance: 1, exposing social darkness and reflecting people's sufferings. Such as Yuan, Lu Zhailang and Zao Mi, boldly attacked the autocratic rule and failed politics of the Yuan Dynasty, and made people see the dark social reality and the deep suffering of the people under the double clutches of the nation and class. 2. Show heroism and praise the people's resistance. Some positively praised the heroes of the people's uprising, such as "double merits" and "Li Ying's defeat". Some praise historical heroes, such as "Single Knife Meeting". Some show the resistance struggle of various weak people, such as Yuan, a widow who cursed the government and heaven and earth; "Exploring Chen Zhou" describes farmer Zhang Pigu's condemnation and resistance to Quan Hao; Save the Wind and Dust is about Zhao, a prostitute who is too old to fight. 3. Describe love and marriage and reflect women's problems. Some describe the struggle between young men and women who sincerely love each other and pursue marital autonomy, such as The West Chamber, Moonlight Pavilion, Horse on the Wall, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, Shen Opera Zhang Sheng Zhu Hai and Liu Yi Zhushu, which are also called the four major love dramas, all have the same anti-feudal theme and show women's wishes and pursuits. Some expose men's treachery and reflect women's misfortunes, such as the rainy night in Xiaoxiang and Hu Qiu pretending to be a wife. Some reflect the tragic fate and life struggle of prostitutes, such as Save the Wind and Dust and Golden Pool. 4. Praise loyalty and punish traitors. For example, Wutian Pagoda, An Incident Occurred in the East Window, The Orphan of Zhao and so on. Or they cherish national feelings or praise justice. Many case dramas exposed the corruption of officials and praised some incorruptible officials. This kind of works embodies the ideal and has certain practical significance. In art, Yuan Zaju is novel and unique in form, and has high attainments in structural plot, characterization and dramatic language. , which marks the maturity of China traditional opera art and has distinctive artistic characteristics: 1. Realism is the mainstream of Yuan Zaju creation, but there are also many positive and romantic descriptions. Many excellent zaju works not only describe people's sufferings, but also show people's resistance, which often makes people win. We should give those overbearing dignitaries and adulterers due punishment and let them end in failure, thus expressing people's ideals. 2. Structurally, most excellent zaju writers can carefully contrast the lyrics for their debut, which makes the drama contradictions concentrated, the main line prominent and the plot compact and changeable, so many zaju works have strong dramatic effects. 3. Yuan Zaju successfully created a large number of typical characters with distinct personalities, which is an important symbol of its artistic maturity. Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, Kang, Ji and other outstanding writers can follow the inevitability of characters' development to arrange plots, and then use a variety of artistic means to reveal the characters' personality characteristics through sharp and fierce drama conflicts, thus making the characters full of flesh and blood and lifelike. 4. The language of Yuan Zaju is colorful and expressive. The works of Yuan Zaju absorbed a large number of folk languages and merged with literary languages, forming the characteristics of popularity, fluency, simplicity, directness and vividness. This is a remarkable change in China's literary creation from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese. The language of Yuan Dynasty zaju writers mostly emphasizes the true colors, such as Guan Hanqing and Kang. There are also some writers, such as Wang Shifu and Ma Zhiyuan, who emphasize literary talent. Legends in Ming and Qing Dynasties are a form of drama developed from Southern Opera in Song and Yuan Dynasties. It originated in the late Yuan Dynasty, spread in the early Ming Dynasty, flourished in the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, reached its peak in Wanli, and lasted until the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Many works are called "Ci Qu Shan Hai".

Due to the general interest in traditional Chinese opera from all walks of life in Ming Dynasty, Kunshan Opera and Yiyang Opera became popular in many towns and villages. There are frequent performances in the royal court, the mansion of noble literati and the grass platform of folk temple fairs. In the early stage, the performance of the Ming court was mainly undertaken by "Jiao Fang"; During the Wanli period, the Forbidden City set up theatrical troupes such as "Sizhai" and "Yuxi Palace". Sometimes a street troupe will be called to perform adjustment in the palace. Many nobles and scholar-officials privately store "homework", and some even perform their own scripts. In order to strive for success, they often personally explain and guide the actors, rehearse carefully, put forward very strict requirements for the actors in performance, reach a higher level in art, and have a certain promotion effect on the development of the stage art of traditional Chinese opera. Folk performances, with water and land stage; There are many skilled Kunqu opera and Yi cavity artists in the troupe. At this time, the scale of opera performance far exceeded the workshops of Goulan Washe and Qilu in Song and Yuan Dynasties.

In music, different vocal cavities have different characteristics. For example, Kunshan Opera is a masterpiece of North and South music, which gives full play to the unique characteristics of elegance and exquisiteness of South music and absorbs the warm and generous style of North music. The collocation of various official tunes and the arrangement of performances are more standardized, and at the same time, borrowing palaces and picking songs are widely used, which makes the structural method of divertimento more complete and expressive. Actors' singing skills are becoming more and more exquisite, and they are required to "sing all kinds of songs" to reach the height of personality and drama. These are the experiences summed up by playwrights and artists in their long-term singing practice of Kunqu Opera, and they have become an important legacy of China's national vocal music. The arrangement of musical instruments and the organization of band scenes in Kunshan cavity are also richer and more complete, which enables the performance to be carried out in the specified scenes and rhythms, and sets a good example for the band accompaniment of later operas and operas. On the basis of "more words and less sounds, all kinds of music in Yiyang create" auxiliary tune "and" rolling tune ". "Bangqiang" is a vocal art combining solo and chorus, which makes up for the deficiency of instrumental accompaniment in Yiyang aria to some extent, enriches the form of aria, and plays a role in rendering the feelings of characters and setting off the atmosphere. Rolling Tune is an easy-to-understand lyric sung by Running Water Board, which not only increases the change of music rhythm, but also helps to express the feelings of the song more freely. Most Yiyang operas only use percussion instruments with strong sound effects such as gongs and drums as foil, which is related to the conditions of performing for a large number of lower-class people in temples and squares in villages and towns, and is also closely related to the fact that the content of early Yiyang operas is biased towards historical dramas with large numbers of people and lively scenes, so the overall style of Yiyang operas appears loud and unrestrained. These had a profound influence on the music of later high-pitched operas.

In performing arts, the meticulous division of labor between feet and colors is undoubtedly the key to the enrichment and improvement of performing arts in this period. Kunshan dialect, in particular, has developed from the seven colors of southern opera to the twelve colors of rivers and lakes, enabling actors to concentrate on the creation of a certain type and a certain character, explore their hearts and try to figure out their personalities. All kinds of performing arts have a unique play, and artists have created many distinctive typical images. "Liyuan Garden" summarizes the experience of Kunshan Opera performance art, and puts forward "Eight Essentials of Form" and "Ten Diseases of Art", which shows the strict requirements for Kunshan Opera performance art. Although the performance of Yiyang Opera is not as exquisite as Kunshan Opera, it also has its achievements and styles that cannot be ignored. For example, when singing, we should pay attention to the audience's acceptance, try to enliven the stage atmosphere with vivid chanting, strengthen the drama and action of the performance, and avoid the single lyricism in some traditional southern operas. According to some entries in Qi Biaojia's Yuan Shan Tang Qu Pin, the actors in Yiyang Opera also attach great importance to the portrayal of the characters' hearts, which often "can make the viewers cry". Due to the need of historical drama performance, the war scenes shown by folk martial arts and acrobatics are unique, with fiery and rough colors. The local opera in Qing Dynasty is the third stage of classical opera. It has a common artistic form with modern and modern operas. At the end of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, local operas flourished around the country, called the Flower Department. When they entered the Qianlong period, they began to compete with the Kunqu Opera "Ya Bu". By the end of the leaf, the flower department overwhelmed the elegant department and occupied the dominant position on the stage until the end of Daoguang. This 150 year is the era of local operas in the Qing Dynasty. The operas of 1840 19 19 are called modern operas, including Peking Opera formed in Tongzhi and Guangxu years and a drama reform movement that appeared in the early 20th century. 、

The local drama in Qing Dynasty has a strong and sad main style, which created a musical system with plate variants as the main part and brought a new form of script literature. In addition, the structural form of drama text has also changed from the separation of legends to the separation of fields, so that the system is no longer as cumbersome and loose as legends, but has the characteristics of rigorous structure and suitable for the audience. However, the local operas in Qing Dynasty also had some shortcomings, such as complicated language and low accuracy.

The number of local operas in Qing Dynasty is huge, which is the highest in history. Historical materials: 1956 During the first national opera repertoire statistics, there were 5 1867 traditional opera repertoires, and there were tens of thousands of repertoires and scripts belonging to local operas in the Qing Dynasty. The local operas in Qing Dynasty were mostly created by craftsmen from farmers or rural areas and artists from the bottom of urban society, so the local operas in Qing Dynasty were close to the people and had a wide mass. Local operas in Qing Dynasty were mainly adapted from historical romances and novels. In addition, there are adaptations and transplants based on zaju, legends, scripts and Quyi. The themes of local operas in Qing Dynasty can be divided into historical dramas, women's dramas, love dramas, case-solving dramas, fairy tales, humorous dramas and dramas that cannot be classified. Among them, historical dramas include Ruyi Hook, Qinghe Bridge and Yangpingguan. Female dramas include Mulan and Fan Jiangguan, love dramas include Buy Marriage Fat, He Wenxiu, etc., case-solving dramas include Tanyin Mountain, Revenge of the Chivalrous Man, etc., and God dramas include people in pictures and people in pictures.

China's plays were introduced to China from the west, and were called "new dramas of civilization" before the May 4th Movement in the early 20th century. This early drama still has some features of China traditional drama. As a foreign art form, civilized drama must go through a process of adaptation if it wants to be rooted in the cultural soil of the Chinese nation. "Art" had to face the rejection of local culture in the early stage, and at the same time had to seek some support as the foothold of China's drama. However, it is also necessary to prevent being melted by national culture and losing its independent character. Therefore, in the fierce collision between Chinese and western cultures, the form of civilized drama has become a transitional form of "non-Chinese and non-Chinese, non-Chinese and non-Western, non-new and non-old, non-new and non-old, and mixed". In artistic form, it is neither like western drama nor mixed with China traditional drama. In terms of content, it is often a combination of Chinese and western, lacking its own things. At the same time, I have not found my own cultural orientation. Although it once flourished, it is like duckweed floating on the water, but it has not taken root yet. After the May 4th Movement, western drama was reintroduced intact in the form of realistic drama, which was called "new drama". It was called "Drama" from 1928, and it has been used ever since.

19 19, the may 4th movement took place in China, which was a patriotic movement and a new cultural movement aimed at emancipating the mind. It advocates folk books and science, opposes old morality and advocates new morality: opposes classical Chinese and advocates vernacular Chinese; As a result, new literature appeared, and a new drama, shop drama, was also formed in this cultural movement.

After the transition of China's civilized drama stage and the cultivation of the May 4th New Culture Movement, western drama finally gained a firm foothold in China. Its signs are: the emergence of new drama literature, the team engaged in drama, specialized drama education, the rise of amateur drama system, the activity of amateur drama groups (including campus), and the initial establishment of drama director system.

Wang Youyou was the first to put forward the "drama that loves beauty". He thinks that the intervention of commercial power makes drama emphasize profit unilaterally, which damages art. Therefore, he wants to imitate western "amateur" and eastern "amateur drama" and organize a non-commercial drama group. His idea came true in the second year-at his initiative, the Shanghai People's Drama Society was established, which became the first drama group after the May 4th Movement. Its founding "Declaration" said: "The era of watching plays is now over, and the theater really occupies an important position in modern society. It is the wheel to promote social progress and the X-ray mirror to find the root causes of social diseases."

Since then, Peking University, Tsinghua University, yenching university, Nankai University and some middle schools have also launched the "Love Beauty Drama" movement, and campus theatrical troupes have mushroomed, forming a landscape of the May 4th drama.

After the decline of popular drama society, another drama group in Shanghai-drama association rose. In the 1920s, it not only organized many public performances and staged many famous plays, but also caused a sensation in Shanghai with a novel "A Housewife's Fan", which made the play famous at one fell swoop. In addition, it also took the lead in establishing a modern director system in China drama circle, and trained many drama talents. The reason for its success is related to the leading role of the famous dramatist Hong Shen in this society.

During the May 4th New Culture Movement, traditional operas were severely criticized, and since then, operas have entered the era of modern operas. The formation of Beijing Opera is the result of the development of local operas in Qing Dynasty. After Beijing Opera became a national representative opera, it did not suppress the development of local operas at all. From local operas in Qing Dynasty to Peking Opera, China opera is very prosperous.

At the beginning of the 20th century, with the revolutionary trend in China's cultural field, the drama reform movement also flourished. However, the new dramas at that time, that is, "civilized dramas" and early dramas, did not have the director's setting. 192 1 year, dramatist Hong Shen returned from studying in the United States. In the process of performing and practicing with his colleagues in Shanghai Dramatists Association, he really established a formal director rehearsal system and formulated and formed a relatively complete director system. But the art of drama directing really developed after the 1930s. At the beginning of the 20th century, Shanghai Peking Opera artists used early dramas for reference to arrange new dramas. 1925, when Zhou performed "Han Liu Bang", he used the director's words for the first time in the advertisement: "Zhou Jun directed and edited two Chinese history dramas, and the civil and military institutions were unprecedented." 1930, Mei Lanfang went to the United States to perform, and hired Zhang, a professor from Nankai University who was giving lectures in the United States, to help sort out and revise the script. At that time, Zhang also used the title of director, but the establishment and formation of the director system in Peking Opera was after the establishment of People's Republic of China (PRC), and the real introduction of the director system into the field of traditional Chinese opera and the establishment of the director system in traditional Chinese opera was the reform of Yue Opera in Yuan Xuefen in the1940s.

The 1930s was a very difficult period in the history of China. On the one hand, ethnic conflicts have intensified. 193 1 year, the "December 18th Incident" broke out and the Japanese army invaded the Northeast. On the other hand, it is the intensification of class contradictions, and the struggle between workers and peasants against capitalists and land houses is surging.

During this period, China's dramas constantly absorbed and borrowed from western dramas, but they had shifted from eclecticism of various schools to emphasizing realism, and modernist drama experiments gradually faded. However, under the urging of the times, China's plays swept away the romantic and sentimental foundation of the past, turned to grief and indignation, and took the initiative to shoulder the heavy responsibility of arousing the people and saving the country. After more than ten years of exploration, China's dramas have finally found their own development path and started to mature. Its main characteristics are: closely combining drama with the needs of China society and people, rooted in the soil of national culture, while learning western drama, creatively transforming this foreign art form into a drama with the traditional artistic spirit of China, making it a drama variety that China needs and China people love; A number of outstanding playwrights and dramas have emerged, such as Cao Yu and Xia Yan. Professional troupes began to appear, and the performing arts approached and reached the world level.

China traditional opera has always been rooted in China folk, and is deeply loved by the people. There are many kinds of plays in China. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 360 kinds of operas and tens of thousands of traditional operas in various ethnic areas in China. Among them, Beijing Opera, Yue Opera, Huangmei Opera, Pingju Opera and Henan Opera are called the five major operas in China. All kinds of local operas have their own audiences. People who are far away from home even regard listening to and watching national operas as a sign of missing their hometown.

In addition to drama, there are about 360 kinds of traditional operas and tens of thousands of traditional plays in ethnic minority areas in China. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), many traditional plays have been adapted, and new historical plays and modern plays that express the theme of modern life have been warmly welcomed by the audience.