Heritage Story - Song Dynasty Opera Relics And Song Performances

Mr. Liu Nianzi put forward an idea of"Studies on the historical remains of Chinese theatre"in 1950's. In my opinion, it is important to get some conclusion from history rather than from imagination when studying Chinese traditional opera.Chinese traditional opera is an old-age art with long history. It is always played with folk religion and folk-customs. We may find various kinds of historical remains of Chinese theatre including painting, fresco, brick sculpture, stone sculpture, carving, year picture, mire mold, pottery, China, paper-cut, stitch work and ancient stage, etc.The object of my paper is Song Dynasty's historical remains of Chinese theatre. I chose this object firstly because of the charm of Song Dynasty. Song Dynasty was set up by Zhao Kuangying in 960 A.D. and ruined in 1279 A.D. Chinese society experienced a lot of fatal transform in every aspect of social life during this 300 years. Song Dynasty is an important stage linking between the past and the future for the development of Chinese society. She influenced the following dynasties deeply in all aspects.Historiographer Chen Yinque said that Chinese national culture reached the peak of perfection in Song Dynasty after thousands years'development. Mr. Yan Fu also agreed that better or worse, China becomes today's China mostly due to the Sony Dynasty. And Song Dynasty means important to us if we want to study the development of Chinese people's politics and customs.The history of Chinese traditional opera was kept down widely in all kinds of cultural relic because Chinese traditional opera is visual and relating closely with people's life. These cultural relic became rare historical remains of Chinese theatre. They are hypostatic record for the prosperous developing of Chinese traditional opera.Chinese traditional opera developed into a new seedtime from"prehistoric state"in Song Dynasty. The appearance of Goulan Washe together with the thriving and prosperous of folk art made Chinese traditional opera become a compositive art of story-telling, singing, dancing and role-playing. Meanwhile, the historical remains of Chinese theatre began to appear in bulk. The appearance of these historical remains of Chinese theatre has a background of social history and culture developing without question. Contrarily, we can treat them as the mirror of folk custom in that time.Through a comprehensive analysis of the historical remains of Chinese theatre, this paper tries to tap and sort out this precious historical document; attempts to restore the specific style of divertimento performance in history in Song Dynasty; and gives a relatively clear comprehensive knowledge of the divertimento of Song Dynasty, which has a significant position in the history of Chinese drama. This paper has five parts as Introduction, Partâ… , Partâ…¡, Partâ…¢and End.The part of Introduction expatiates the definition of the historical remains of Chinese theatre and how important Song Dynasty means to the development of Chinese traditional opera.Partâ… is"Summarize of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre". It can be divided into three different parts. The first one is"List of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre", which enumerates the name, derivation and character of every cultural relic. Each one has a picture. There are 26 pieces of cultural relics of the Northern Song Dynasty and 13 pieces of the Southern Song Dynasty. Most of them are first-hand information gathered in the scene. The number of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre is limited because of the long time. Readers may get a general idea of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre from this part.The second part names"The Background of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre". The background includes: (1) Value culture and education, dam up fight (2) great population with developed economy (3) flourishing trade (4) emerging of the citizen level (5) popular of cultural life (6) the forms of burial (7) the development of drama.The third part is"distributing of Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre". Coordinate the distributing of time and place by concluding and summering every cultural relic.Partâ…¡"Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre"puts them into categories and investigates some pieces of cultural relics in detail. The Song Dynasty's the historical remains of Chinese theatre we have found today belong to eight different species.1, Inscription2, Brick Sculpture3, Stone Sculpture4, Fresco5, Tomb Figure6, Painting7, ArtifactPartâ…¢tries to tap and sort out this precious historical document; attempts to restore the specific style of divertimento performance in history in Song Dynasty. Including summarize, play team, spectator, perform field, actor and actress, role and profession, finery and make up, property and musical instrument.The historical remains of Chinese theatre may provide us a correct cognition of the history of Traditional Chinese Opera. The historical remains of Chinese theatre of the Song Dynasty we have discovered provide us a vivid image of music and dance, storytelling, puppet show, She Huo, Song drama and so on. In addition, the images of different role and character may help us know the performance of Song drama well.