Singing, chanting, acting and playing are the four artistic methods in opera performance. It is also the four basic skills for opera actors to perform. Often referred to as the "Four Gongs".

1. "Singing" refers to singing skills. It uses vocal skills to express the character's personality, emotions and mental state, combines voice transmission with emotion, and expresses the drama through the artistic appeal of vocal music. The heart song of the Chinese.

2. "Nian" refers to musical recitation. Opera chanting can be roughly divided into two categories, namely rhyme and loose. Both are artistically refined languages, with a sense of rhythm and music, sonorous and melodious, and harmonious with singing.

3. "Doing" refers to doing work, and generally refers to dance-like body movements. When actors create characters, they have various procedures for their hands, eyes, body, and steps. They also have various techniques for beards, feathers, hair swings, and water sleeves. These stylized dance vocabulary are used flexibly to highlight the character's personality, age, and personality. Characteristics of one's own character and identity, and make the artistic image created by oneself even more glorious.

4. "Fighting" refers to martial arts, which is a dance version of traditional martial arts and a highly artistic refinement of fighting scenes in life. It is generally divided into two categories: Baozi Gong and Blanket Gong.

Extended information

Chinese Opera

1. Chinese opera is a comprehensive stage art style. Its characteristic is that many art forms are brought together under one standard to reflect their respective personalities in the same nature. These forms mainly include: poetry, music, and dance. Poetry refers to its literature, music refers to its musical accompaniment, and dance refers to its performance.

2. Opera and drama are both types of drama, in which actors play characters and use dialogue and actions to express a storyline of a certain length. The difference is that opera uses musical dialogue and dance movements to express real life, that is, singing and dancing. It is also known as "singing, chanting, doing and playing".

3. Chinese opera uses a method of "taking its meaning and abandoning its form" to express life, such as the freehand landscape of Chinese painting, which uses vertical and horizontal strokes to reflect all the beautiful things in life. Therefore, on the opera stage, there is a red-faced Guan Yu and a white-faced Cao Cao; there are long songs for crying, long sleeves for dancing; there are spring colors without flowers and trees, and rivers without waves.

4. Opera does not use the "three unities" principle to squeeze life to facilitate performance like drama. Instead, virtual means are used to create flexible time and space, and the vivid performance of the actors and the imagination and understanding of the audience are used to complete the depiction of the vast world. Therefore, opera can create the illusion of night under bright lights, and it can ride horses and boats on an empty stage.

Baidu Encyclopedia—Singing, chanting, and beating