Analysis And Research Of Creation And Singing Style About Opera Jiang Jie

Jiang Jie is a pride of contemporary Chinese opera and occupies an especially important position in its history. Revised from the famous novel Red Crag, which describes the heroic deeds of a Party member and revolutionary martyr Jiang Zhujun, and with Yan Su from Kongzheng Cultural Troupe as the playwright, Yang Ming, Jiang Chunyang and Jin Sha as the composers, Chen Sha as the director, the large-scale opera was first presented in Beijing Children's Theater on September 4, 1964 and won great success. In the opera, the faithful and unyielding intrepidity of the martyrs was extolled through the description of the acute, complex and fierce struggles between the revolutionaries and Kuomintang. With Jiang Jie as the main thread, the opera successfully portrayed the heroic figure of a Chinese intellectual who abhorred all evils and faced danger and death fearlessly, and eulogized the revolutionary forerunners who were always ready to sacrifice their lives for the ideal of communism. Meanwhile, the opera didn't fail to provide an accurate and appropriate depiction of the secondary figures. In the process of musical creation, a variety of operas such as Sichuan Opera, Wu Drama, Shaoxing Opera, Sichuan Voiceless, Peking Opera, etc. were employed in accordance with the location of the story. These musical elements and opera forms like opera quartet and chorus were organically combined to create the image of the heroine on the basis of Chinese folk songs and opera and musical materials.With the basic principle of respecting the truth and by virtue of a combination of the comprehensive research methods and materials of literature, history, music, dance, fine arts, sociology, philosophy and esthetics, the thesis analyzes the opera Jiang Jie from diverse perspectives and summarizes its singing style and historic significance. All the gains are then integrated in the my singing.The thesis consists of four Chapters:Chapter One provides a brief introduction to the appearance of Jiang Jie, with the focus on its creation background viewed from the aspects of history, culture and development process of Chinese operas. In addition, the source of inspiration and the hardship of production are revealed to the readers.Chapter Two consists of an intensive and overall analysis of the style of Jiang Jie from three different aspects, includes a synopsis of the opera's overall style, the utilization of traditional Chinese musical materials and the creation viewpoint of"make foreign things serve China". The style was developed by way of drawing from previous experiences, integrating musical materials refined from traditional Chinese operas and Western operas into its creation and making innovations on the premise of learning from the past. Through solo, chorus, quartet, solo and choral accompaniment and other rich vocal concert forms, with full use of the changes and contrasts in the musical language, and with the theme tune Hongmeizan played from the beginning to the end, the author of the opera successfully depicted the characters'inner world and created vivid and complete music figures. The use of traditional Chinese opera music materials derived from Wu opera and Sichuan opera and the opera board cavity structure conferred the opera a distinct national characteristic. In addition, the creation viewpoint of"make foreign things serve China"made the opera a perfect combination of techniques in Western operas and Chinese operas.Chapter Three analyzes different interpretations of the opera from two perspectives, covering the utilization of the traditional Chinese opera singing methods and the different styles of the five generations of the actresses of Jiang Jie, with their characteristics all analyzed in detail.Chapter Four expounds on the significance and influence of the opera. The analysis is first centered on how the revolutionary spirit shown in the opera on influences the spiritual life of people at that time and afterwards and then on how its creation and singing influences later development of opera in China.At present, researches on the opera Jiang Jie are scarce and among these existing few, most focus on its periphery while few analyze its ontology and singing. Therefore, this thesis, with its research and analysis of the creation and singing style of Jiang Jie, has a profound and practical significance and will fill in a gap in the opera research in China.