Lu Opera is a national intangible cultural heritage and a traditional local drama popular in the three northeastern provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu and Anhui. It evolved from the earliest Shandong Qinshu and has a history of more than a hundred years. What are the characteristics of such a classic local drama? Let’s go to Lu Opera Culture to have a look!
Lu opera music is gradually developed on the basis of the "sitting yangqin" which evolved from folk songs. Its most prominent feature is that it is both an "opera" and a "folk art". Its singing style is mainly Banqiang, and also sings Qupai. The tunes are simple, graceful, flexible, easy to learn and sing. There are three basic board styles: "siping", "two boards" (including "duozi board" and "flowing water"), and "wabi".
The accompaniment instruments of Lu opera are divided into writing and martial arts. The main musical instruments in the literary field are the pendulum qin and the dulcimer, followed by the erhu, sanxian, pipa, flute, suona, etc., which can be added or removed depending on the plot. After the founding of New China, some Western orchestral instruments were added. The accompaniment mostly adopts the form of "xuetongue" (counterpoint). For example, the Erban accompaniment imitates one sentence of the singing tune, and the Siping accompaniment imitates the second half or the last sentence of the singing tune. The accompaniment instruments used in the martial arts field mainly include leather drums, wooden boards, large gongs, small gongs, large cymbals, hall drums, dagu, etc. The Gong and Drum Sutras are all absorbed from Peking Opera and other operas.
The music of Lu Opera was born out of the Shandong Qinshu art of rap. The melody is simple and fresh, the lyrics are easy to understand, and the singing style has a strong local flavor and local characteristics. There are many local slangs in the dialogues of traditional operas, which are very suitable for the appreciation habits of ordinary people. With the development of opera types, the singing music has been enriched and the expressive power has been continuously strengthened. Especially in expressing modern life, it has strong adaptability. It is easy to understand and has distinctive characteristics of the times.
In the singing method of Lu Opera, real voices are mainly used for both male and female voices. Some high notes are processed by a combination of real and false voices, making it sound natural and smooth. The singing style of Lu Opera pays attention to using words to set up the tone and emotions to carry the voice. The words are pronounced clearly and the spoken language is natural. Runqiang often uses slides, vibratos, and ornamental tones, which are combined with the soft tones, vibrato, beats, and overtones of the main accompaniment instrument, the pendulum piano, as well as the transitional tones and ornamental tones naturally brought out by the up and down inversion, making the entire singing tune seamless. Beautiful and smooth.
The language used in Lu Opera belongs to Jinan Mandarin, a northern language family. Its character emphasis rules and pronunciation and pronunciation methods are very similar to Mandarin. The stage dialogues of the traditional plays of Lu Opera are based on Jinan Mandarin as the standard and focus on upper rhymes; while the dialogues of modern plays are directly in Jinan Mandarin, with distinctive local characteristics. In performances, Lu Opera is good at using easy-to-understand and vivid mass language as lyrics to create characters.