Text/Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Recorder Huang Zhouhui Photo/Provided by the Cinema CinemaOn October 4th, the national opera “Overseas Chinese Commentary” will be officially premiered in the Opera Hall of the Guangzhou Grand Theater. The play is a key support program of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s “Chinese National Opera Inheritance and Development Project” and the “Historical Theme Creation Project”, telling the ups and downs behind the overseas Chinese criticism. The drama was produced by the Propaganda Department of the Zhuhai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Zhuhai High-tech Zone Management Committee. It was produced by the Zhuhai Performing Arts Collection and performed by the Zhuhai Song and Dance Troupe. It was jointly created by the main creative and leading actors and more than 200 cast and staff members in front and behind the scenes and worked together for two years.
Stills from the national opera “Overseas Commentary”
Art presents the national spirit of historical themes
Overseas Commentary is a general term for letters and remittances sent by overseas Chinese through private channels and financial and postal institutions to their families. It is a carrier of “convergence of letters” and is called letters across the sea and flourished in the coastal areas of Guangdong. The national opera “Overseas Criticism” started with the fact that Chinese worker Liang Chengru rushed to his hometown to prevent his daughter from being sold like himself, but Cinema died at sea. A “pplication” left by his death began, linking Liang Dongshi and Liang Caiyun, who had to sell their daughter, the mother-in-law who had been sick for a long time, Tang Youxin and his wife, and many Chinese workers who were empathetic to Liang Chengru, showing the compatriots who were loyal to the years of suffering, reflecting the great love of the Chinese nation rooted in the bone marrow and flowing in blood.
Stills from the national opera “Overseas Chinese Commentary”
How to make a piece of Overseas Chinese Commentary be concrete and present it artistically and humanly on the stage is a proposition for opera creation. BabaylanThe screenwriter of the play, Wang Yong, said: “A Cinema is the starting point of the story., it is also the fulcrum of the story. This “fulcrum” connects the past and present lives of the Chinese nation. Only by expressing human nature and human feelings can we break the barriers of time and be closer to the overseas Chinese and Chinese workers in the past on the emotional level, so that the “Overseas Chinese Appeal” is no longer an exhibition in the museum’s window, history is no longer a cold text and pictures, and the story is more humane. Komiks, becoming a warm, touching and shocking light. ”
The top team spent two years working hard to build the national opera “Overseas Certificate” gathered top artists in the industry – consultant of the Chinese Musicians Association, former head of the China Railway Culture Troupe and first-class composer Meng Weidong as the composer, vice chairman of the China Drama Association, president of the National Peking Opera Theater, and first-class screenwriter Wang Yong as the screenwriter, former vice president of the Central Academy of Drama and doctoral supervisor Liao Xianghong, former vice president of the National Grand Theater and former vice president of the Beijing Dance Academy Deng Yijiang as the director, permanent conductor of the Central Opera House, postdoctoral fellow of the Central Academy of Music, and young conductor Zhu Man and Qing href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan‘s conductor Fan Jie served as the orchestra conductor and chorus conductor respectively. In addition, Cinema invited the national first-class stage lighting lantern, the well-known stage designer Ding Ding, and the well-known clothing designer Cui Xiaodong and other artists to help, with young singers Lu Wei, Li Yang, Dong Bin and Li Bufan. Stills from the national opera “Overseas Chinese Commentary” in the spring of 2021, the CCP’s Zhuhai href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department and Zhuhai Performing Arts Group decided to start the creation of the national opera “Overseas Chinese Commentary”. In July of the same year, Zhuhai Performing Arts Group organized the main creative team of Babaylan to go to the Tangjia, Jiangmen and other places for field trips. When visiting the Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum in Jiangmen, the early Chinese workers took a fireboat across the ocean, the miserable scenes that Chinese workers could not bear to witness, and the vast and extraordinary Pacific Ocean and the strangeness of the Chinese workers.The dangers and unpredictability of the country have brought huge impact to the main creators.
The main creative team held several planning meetings in Beijing and Zhuhai. Screenwriter Wang Yong refined and processed them based on historical facts, revised them several times, and revised them repeatedly; the composer Meng Weidong closely followed the plot and integrated music and lyrics; director Liao Xianghong firmly grasped the characteristics and advantages of national opera, and vividly presented the righteousness and love of the characters in the play.
Re-polishing makes the play more Guangdong-style
The national opera “Overseas Chinese Commentary” is based on a Overseas Chinese Commentary as the core. Komiks has characters and structures the whole play. “Overseas Chinese Commentary” and “The Sea” have different symbolic meanings. “Komiks” is a letter from home, a silver letter, a bond connecting my hometown with a thousand miles apart, and a symbol of commitment and faith. A “Overseas Chinese Commentary” signed by a hundred people is a transmission of love for overseas Chinese, showing the suffering, homesickness and family and country feelings of Chinese workers. Their good deeds and righteous deeds are also important manifestations of the Chinese nation’s credibility and commitments; the sea is a road of life, a barrier, and a symbol of fate that is difficult to control in life.
In terms of music style, the play is based on deep, atmospheric, heavy and lyrical as its overall music style, with very distinctive musical characteristics and themes – using Guangdong music as the tone, it has strong Lingnan music characteristics. The smooth and emotional melody expresses the emotions of the characters and exaggerates the emotions of the characters; various singing forms such as solo, chorus, etc. structure this drama to enhance the action and drama of the characters; the orchestration uses a variety of national instruments to fully demonstrate the charm of Chinese traditional culture.
Stills from the national opera “Qiqian Commentary”
In the stage presentation, the play has distinct era and regional characteristics. It takes the sea as the main spatial image, follows the aesthetic principles of freehand painting, and creates a grand, ethereal and poetic space. The scene setting of virtual and real, and the juxtaposition of physics and psychological time and space externalize and poetically the inner world of the characters, bringing stronger inner impact to the audience.
It is reported that the national opera “Qiqian Certificate” is the first opera work created by Zhuhai Performing Arts Group in just two and a half years. On July 3, after the audition at BabaylanCinema Zhuhai Grand TheaterCinema, after another 3 months of polishing. The premiere of the drama in Guangzhou has strengthened local characteristics in stage design and multimedia design, highlighting Guangdong elements, and the plot setting emphasizes the conflicts between the characters’ inner conflicts and the relationship between the characters, and the theme is more concise and improved.