Homunculus (talk | contribs) Missed line |
Homunculus (talk | contribs) Include a dolop of postmodernist nonsense from a Duke professor |
||
Line 9: | Line 9: | ||
They included five Beijing operas, ''The Red Lantern'', ''ShaJia Bang'' (Shajia Village), ''Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategies'', ''Raid on the White Tiger Regiment'', and ''On the Dock''; two ballets, ''Red Detachment of Women'' and ''White-Haired Girl''; and one symphony, ''Sha-jia-bang Symphony''. After 1969 several other model operas were produced, including Azalea Mountain, Ode to the Dragon River, Battle in the Plains, and Bay of Panshi, following the original model in content and form.<ref name="Lu Xing"/> |
They included five Beijing operas, ''The Red Lantern'', ''ShaJia Bang'' (Shajia Village), ''Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategies'', ''Raid on the White Tiger Regiment'', and ''On the Dock''; two ballets, ''Red Detachment of Women'' and ''White-Haired Girl''; and one symphony, ''Sha-jia-bang Symphony''. After 1969 several other model operas were produced, including Azalea Mountain, Ode to the Dragon River, Battle in the Plains, and Bay of Panshi, following the original model in content and form.<ref name="Lu Xing"/> |
||
==Modern manifestations== |
|||
Some of the eight model revolutionary operas have been scrubbed clean of their political baggage and sent on tours around the world. According to Liu Kang from Duke University, "During a 1996 North American tour, the China Central Ballet repeatedly performed The Red Detachment of Women as its grand finale, which caused postmodern audiences in Los Angeles and New York to marvel at the opera's innovative multipositionality and hybridity, in which revolutionary ideologies, exotic nativist music and dances of the Li ethnic minority on Hainan Island, and high European styles and modalities coalesce in a neo-Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk."<ref>Liu, Kang. "Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China", 2, Vol. 24, No. 3, Postmodernism and China (Autumn, 1997), pp. 99-122. Duke University Press</ref> |
|||
==References== |
==References== |
Revision as of 04:50, 10 April 2010
Revolutionary opera refers to the revolutionary model operas planned and engineered during the Cultural Revolution by Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong.[1] As Communist Party-sanctioned operas, they were considered "revolutionary" and modern in terms of thematic and musical features when compared with traditional operas.
In total, eight revolutionary operas were made, and, according to some sources, they were the only sources of artistic expression allowed in China at the time. Traditional Beijing opera was considered "feudalistic and bourgeois", and was banned.[1]The operas were made under Mao's provision that "art must serve the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers and must conform to proletarian ideology."[1]
The operas are often taken as paradigmatic of all there was of culture during the Cultural Revolution, and are condemned as an aberration in terms of aesthetic and cultural development.[2]
Origin
Jiang Qing was the chief advocate and engineer of the transformation from traditional opera to revolutionary opera, and chose the Beijing opera as her "laboratory experimentation" for accomplishing this radical change in theater art.[1] Traditional Beijing opera was revolutionized in both form and content. Eight yangbanxi, or model operas, were produced in the first three years of the Cultural Revolution.
They included five Beijing operas, The Red Lantern, ShaJia Bang (Shajia Village), Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategies, Raid on the White Tiger Regiment, and On the Dock; two ballets, Red Detachment of Women and White-Haired Girl; and one symphony, Sha-jia-bang Symphony. After 1969 several other model operas were produced, including Azalea Mountain, Ode to the Dragon River, Battle in the Plains, and Bay of Panshi, following the original model in content and form.[1]
Modern manifestations
Some of the eight model revolutionary operas have been scrubbed clean of their political baggage and sent on tours around the world. According to Liu Kang from Duke University, "During a 1996 North American tour, the China Central Ballet repeatedly performed The Red Detachment of Women as its grand finale, which caused postmodern audiences in Los Angeles and New York to marvel at the opera's innovative multipositionality and hybridity, in which revolutionary ideologies, exotic nativist music and dances of the Li ethnic minority on Hainan Island, and high European styles and modalities coalesce in a neo-Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk."[3]
References
- ^ a b c d e Lu, Xing (2004). Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. University of South California Press. pp. 143–150.
- ^ Mittler, Barbara. "Popular Propaganda? Art and Culture in Revolutionary China", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia: Dec 2008. Vol. 152, Iss. 4; pg. 466
- ^ Liu, Kang. "Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China", 2, Vol. 24, No. 3, Postmodernism and China (Autumn, 1997), pp. 99-122. Duke University Press