Ma Lan’s Path To Art

In the developing history of Huangmei Opera, the period from China’s Reform and Opening-up to the early90’s is usually called the second prosperity of Huangmei Opera. Whenever we talk about the first prosperity, we’ll always think of Yan (?) Fengying without hesitation. We can not miss Ma Lan in the second prosperity of Huangmei Opera. As an outstanding performing artist, Ma Lan’s way towards art reflects the evolution of the second prosperity of Huangmei Opera. This article not only studies her accomplishments in different stages to form her performing characteristics and her unique performing style, but also reveals the developing course of Huangmei Opera in the second prosperity through Ma Lan. Meanwhile, I hope this article can give some inspirations on the future development of Huangmei Opera through the study of Ma Lan. This article tries to draw an objective and accurate evaluation of the popular opera artist in micro and macro study. This article is divided into four chapters as follow:Chapter one introduces the elementary stage, which is from entering into art school to get systematic study to performing "The Emperor’s Female Sun-in-law" in Hong Kong and filming "The Dragon Lady" after being assigned to the Provincial Huangmei Opera Theater, to summarize Ma Lan’s artistic characteristics through classifying and analyzing her works in this stage.Chapter two introduces the mature stage of Ma Lan’s success. From filming Huangmei Opera TV series of "The Pretty Female Painter" to "Pointing at Xinghua Village" is defined as the mature stage of Ma Lan’s success by this chapter. In this stage, Ma Lan formed her own performing characteristics, and also had the most successful works. This chapter sums up her unique performing characteristics by analyzing the performing and aria of her symbolic works in this stage.Chapter three introduces the developing stage of Ma Lan’s success. The developing stage is from her filming stage drama of "A Dream of Red Mansions" to the musical "Long River". During this period, Ma Lan developed her Huangmei Opera performing longitudinally and successfully converted between "Dan" and "Sheng" role. Meanwhile, she extended her preforming circle, and she started to expand from Huangmei Opera to musical. This chapter summarizes the gains and losses in the period by analyzing every works of Ma Lan.Chapter four introduces the inspirations of the Ma Lan’s success on the development of Huangmei Opera. There are two inspirations, on one hand, we can extend the artistic life expectancy of Huangmei Opera by injecting modern things into tradition; on the other hand, the positive participation of artist helps the fusion of tradition with modern.