Another Lianhuantao that would have been worth to buy a ticket to, Wang Ping-Yang Chi edition. I have to take serious steps if I don’t wanna plunge into my grave without seeing this play live.

Here is a little video, another kind gesture from Dalian’s “wanghappy“, with the obligatory bonus song by Wang Ping after the performance – I don’t even say what it is.[DOWNLOAD] 10MB

Article: Peninsula Morning Post 2012-07-27, see page B06

It seems every theater has to have its own jingju version of a romantic Xinhai Revolution story.

I made a post about CNPOC’s Soulmates in 2011 July-August, however I missed the maiden stage of《护国将军》Savior of the Country by the Tianjin Jingju Theater in 2008 November, what is no wonder considering the date, but I also missed the new staging in 2011 August.

Premiere was broadcast live on CCTV11 on 2008-11-26, with the cast of Wang Ping (as Cai E), Wang Yan (as Xiao Fengxian), Yang Naipeng (as Liang Qichao) and Liu Guijuan (as Mrs. Cai), you can download a copy here or watch on YouTube here.

2 hours long, really dramatic, wholehearted performance with many memorable arias, I liked it. (Géza, haven’t you recorded this, by any chance?) Oh, and before I forget, PG-13. There’s a brothel scene.

If anyone is interested in the 2008 exclusive Wang Ping indoor winter coat interview, here it is. He says that before the performance, Wang Yan lost her voice, and Liu Shuyun was on the alert to substitute her. However, seems Wang Yan recovered quickly.

Story in short:
Cai E, for the benefits of the country reluctantly accepts Yuan Shikai’s invitation and leaves for Beijing with his wife, where Yuan grants him a prestigious title. Cai’s former teacher, Liang Qichao warns him that supporting Yuan won’t be good in the long run, but Cai still hesitates.
Yuan’s Poirot-mustached eldest son and his slimy counselor introduce Cai to the famous Beijing prostitute Xiao Fengxian, who admires Cai’s brilliant abilities for a long time. Nothing serious happens, yet the newspaper blows up the incident and embitters Mrs. Cai.
Yuan Shikai’s ambitions as an Emperor and the signing of the Twenty-One Demands convince Cai E that he has to take Liang’s advice and oppose Yuan. When Yuan’s son and his advisor show up, Cai pretends still supporting Yuan, but after making up with his wife he goes to Tianjin on the pretext of visiting a doctor (he’s in the final stage of his disease).
In Tianjin Liang Qichao and Xiao Fengxian assist and shelter him, and after many twists Cai returns to Yunnan and launches the anti-monarchy war.

Photos: 174K

CCTV11 Theater in the Air, 2012-04-12

→ 京剧《上天台》Shang Tian Tai (Up to the Heavenly Terrace)  [DOWNLOAD] 236MB
Wang Ping (王平) as Liu Xiu, Wang Jiaqing (王嘉庆) as Yao Qi.

“Your beard is so siiiiil-ky…” (I’m bad. Again.)

I liked the starting aria. Wang Ping didn’t fall asleep on stage like someone else did recently… 

By the way, I re-worked the title by changing “Ascending the Heavenly Altar” to “Up to the Heavenly Terrace”.
A large platform in the palace used at such-and-such occasions is better a terrace than an altar, right? Or not? What do you think?
And Yao Qi is just going up there to meet Liu Xiu, “ascending” sounds too out of the world for me.

Native English speakers, please help out. Or those who have seen Epang Palace. How does the Tian Tai look like? It’s at the highest point of the complex I guess.

PS. Boo at that individual in the audience.

A very pretty video with a very pretty cast for today, a traditional Cheng school play from the experimental troupe of the Jingju Theater of Tianjin.

Lü Yang starred in two performances last September in Mei Lanfang Theater, The Unicorn Purse and Muyang Juan (“Shepherd Story”). The latter is also known as Zhu Hen Ji (Story of the Red Scar/Birthmark), it’s one and the same story, but I prefer the second title, I think it’s more descriptive.

→ 京剧《牧羊卷》Muyang Juan (Story of the Red Scar)
2011/09/03, Mei Lanfang Grand Theater, Beijing
CCTV: [1] | [2] | [3]
ed2k: [COPY]

112 stage photos: [DOWNLOAD] 21MB
I forgot who made these photos, sorry.

Cast:
Zhao Jintang: Lü Yang (吕洋)
Zhu Chundeng: Tan Xiaozeng (谭孝曾) (special invitation)
Mrs. Zhu: Li Hong (李宏)
Mrs. Song: Han Qing (韩庆)
Song Cheng: Shao Hailong (邵海龙)
Li Ren: Gao Hang (高航)
Zhu Chunke: Sun Lei (孙磊)
Percussion: Sun Yong (孙永), Liu Yang (刘洋)
Strings: Li Hezun (李河遵), Ai Bing (艾兵)

Summary:
Zhu Chundeng’s father from Shandong is ordered to join the army to subdue Huang Long’s riot. To save their sick and elderly dad, Zhu Chundeng and his younger brother Zhu Chunke volunteer instead and go to Pingxi.

Zhu Chundeng’s mom isn’t happy.

Zhu Chunke’s evil mother, Mrs. Song wants to lay her hands on Zhu Chundeng’s property, and sends his nephew, Song Cheng to wait at the roadside and kill Zhu.
Song Cheng ties up Zhu Chundeng in his sleep, but fortunately a hunter, Li Ren shows up and chases Song away.

Without painted face and padded shoulders, Gao Hang is a real cutie-pie. :P

Zhu Chundeng joins the army, and with the help of Li Ren’s bow defeats Huang Long. For his achievements he’s granted the title “Marquis of Pingxi”, and his younger brother, Chunke is also appointed as minister. Li Ren is promoted to commander. They plan to return to their hometown in glory, and immediately behead Song Cheng.

Song Cheng at home tells his mom that Zhu Chundeng fell in battle. Mrs. Song forces Chundeng’s wife, Zhao Jintang to marry Song Cheng, but she resists. When Song Cheng tries to molest her, Zhao Jintang squeezes Song’s hands into the hand mill.

“Mom! Help!”

The upset Mrs. Song sends Zhao Jintang and Zhu’s old mother to the mountains to herd sheep, hoping they will starve and freeze there. She even takes Mrs. Zhu’s expensive robe. Soon the news arrive that Zhu Chundeng is on the way home! Mrs. Song and Song Cheng dig two fake graves, and falsely inform Chundeng that his wife and mother are dead.

Life in the mountains isn’t a real carnival.

Meanwhile Song Cheng tries to escape, but Li Ren recognizes him and he gets arrested. The grief-stricken Zhu Chundeng visits the family tomb, offers sacrifice and fasts for seven days.
Zhao Jintang and Mrs. Zhu accidentally arrive to the same place, and beg for food. After Mrs. Zhu eats the leftover food they got, she recognizes their family tomb and weeps bitterly. Zhu Chundeng hears the crying, invites Zhao Jinteng inside and asks about their misfortune. Zhao Jinteng is very thin, Zhu Chundeng’s appearance also changed, but when Zhu sees the scar on Jinteng’s palm, he finally recognizes his wife.

“Busted!” To wear a phoenix crown disgracefully is an art itself.

The whole family has a happy reunion, Zhu Chunke, who didn’t know anything about his mother’s evil deeds, also pays respect. They invite Mrs. Song in, who quickly flees upon seeing her conspiracy is exposed.

Bertrand had a “Zhang Huoding Week” at operabeijing.com, and he predicted there will be a “Jin Xiquan week” on Ear Candy.

The idea was tempting, but I decided to hold a “Tianjin week” instead, especially when I saw the sign: the first jingju related article that popped up today during my morning newspaper browsing was this Wang Ping interview below.

Jingju Theater of Tianjin is staging a three-day series in Binhu Theater titled “炫彩青春” – “Dazzling Colors of Youthfulness” – easy to guess it’s not about pushing seniors into the limelight this time. Wang Ping as “producer” was busy with guiding Tianjin’s youngest performers during the dress rehearsals, but he gave a short interview.

(02.28.) Tianjin audience liked all the shows, to see a few stage photos, click here, here and here.

My note in advance: sorry for the crappy English. Translating a foreign language to another is not easy, and Mr. Wang’s endless sentences didn’t ease my work. But I do hope it makes some sense, because he made some very good points.

Article: Tianjin Daily

36 young performers are involved in this project, the “oldest” is 34, the youngest is 19 years old. More then 90% of the young actors of our theater participate in the “big bootcamp”, junior performers have to cooperate as a team and support each other. Of course we organized similar training programs in the past, but this is the first time the productions are performed to “outsiders” too.
Young people rarely have the opportunity to star on stage in major roles, now they can show their qualities and they will be judged not only by experts, but the audience and the market too. In addition, we also can understand our performers better and discover talent.”

Jingju is a “jue’er¹ genre”, spectators do consider what’s the play, but consider even more who will perform? Maintaining the enchanting charm of jingju relies on continued tradition, one generation of performers replaces the other.
From the four great laosheng schools (Ma, Tan, Yang, Xi), Yang (Baosen) school is of Tianjin origin, we have many senior artists like Li Huiliang (厉慧良), Zhang Shilin (张世麟) and Yang Ronghuan (杨荣环), and many well known performers currently active on stage, like Yang Naipeng (杨乃彭), Deng Muwei (邓沐玮), Li Li (李莉), Kang Wansheng (康万生), Li Jingwen (李经文), Zhang Youlin (张幼麟) and so on, they all are indispensable in passing on Beijing Opera art.

Our generation should not forcefully take away the banner of art from their hands, thus confronting the artistic achievements established by older generations, that banner would fade in our hands anyways.
I think that to pass on Beijing Opera art, we should let the next generation of young actors to enter the stage immediately; we should focus on producing quality performers and quality theater pieces, raise the level of young artists, expand their influence and reputation.

So well said. Senior and junior performers should work together, and not against each other.

When training young people, it’s useful to organize them into groups depending on their level, Tianjin currently has five groups. Most experienced artists, CCTV Great Beijing Opera Contest gold medalists, postgraduate students are organized in one team, with members like the Plum Blossom Prize winner Wang Yan (王艳), Cheng school qingyi Lü Yang (吕洋), young laosheng Ling Ke (凌珂), Huang Qifeng (黄齐峰), Yan Hongyu (闫虹羽) etc.
Performers of the second team have similar achievements, they are just 4-5 years younger (of course it doesn’t necessarily mean their biological age), let’s mention Wang Jiaqing (王嘉庆), Li Hong (李宏), Wang Daxing (王大兴), Chen Ai (陈嫒), I think if you paste these names in the new and awesome Search box here and at operabeijing.com, you will get several hits.
Members of the third team are still pursuing their studies in some specialized field, Tianjin’s greatest pride of course is the Yang school laosheng-wusheng education. All these performers are already pretty established and steady.
The most talented young students are picked to form the fourth and fifth team, giving them the opportunity to advance and later study in the specialized and the postgraduate class.

In addition to the internal training system, Wang Ping believes that the best way to work out a team is to offer young people opportunity to perform on stage, with “real swords and real spears”.

Stage is the perfect exercise for a performer, he can only measure his own quality and position when standing in the limelight. Young artists rarely can step on stage, therefore at the time of our internal assessment, we decided to attach the most importance to providing assistance and guidance to them.
Currently all five of our rehearsal rooms are full to bursting, sometimes two plays are rehearsed in one room, the whole theater is filled with the atmosphere of enthusiasm.

Speaking from his own experience, he said:

A performers advancement is inseparable from the instructions of a great teacher. To make this show even more successful, we considered each performer’s individual characteristics, the distinguishing features of different schools, and invited famous masters from every part of the country to help our young actors and actresses. Regardless of their age, some elderly artists demonstrated postures personally, and gave directions line by line, move by move.
Besides learning art from them, junior performers simultaneously can observe the characters and behavior of senior artists.

¹ Ye Shaolan explains the meaning of the expression briefly here: “Back when Peking Opera was the national form of entertainment and Peking Opera performers were the darlings of the press, they had a name for being a star — they called you “juer”. Once you had become a “juer ”, you were worshipped by a devoted following who treated you the same way today’s movie fans treat their icons.”

If there’s a trunk sealing performance, there must be a trunk opening one as well, right? Jingju Theater of Tianjin held it on 18 February, and what else could it be than Long Feng Cheng Xiang? Year of the Dragon will be packed with this drama for sure.

Theater in the Air seems to neglect Tianjin, and the theater’s website is under maintenance, but we got four audience videos: 6, 20, 53 and 76 minutes long. Not bad, but somewhat “fan stuff”, I bet you know what I mean. ;)

→ 京剧《龙凤呈祥》Long Feng Cheng Xiang (The Auspicious Dragon and Phoenix)
 1.0GB
tudou.com: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Great Theatre of China, Tianjin, 2012-02-18
Liu Bei: Wang Ping (王平)
Zhao Yun: Zhang Youlin (张幼麟)
Sun Shangxiang: Li Jingwen (李经文)、Li Li (李莉)
Empress Dowager of Wu: Li Hong (李宏)
Lu Su: Zhao Hua (赵华)
Zhou Yu: Jiao Pengfei (焦鹏飞)
Zhang Fei: Wang Jiaqing (王嘉庆)

Wang Ping with his 58 years was a youngster compared to Li Jingwen and Li Li (65, 66 respectively), but could you guess the age of these two actresses from these pictures?

 
Not bad. What’s the secret? I discovered my first visible wrinkles a few days ago.

No wonder Tianjin is staging so many military dramas, they are very well equipped with suitable performers.
52:17 in the longest video: look how Zhang Fei preens himself, very funny!

Source: 西梅’s blog, 弘扬京剧’s videos

I owe you two Wildboar Forests.

The first one is a production of the Jingju Theater of Tianjin. It was a bit hard to dig out from CCTV’s archives, but it was worth it. This one is the best contemporary version of this opera I’ve ever seen (of course this is just my private opinion). The sound is distorted when too loud (CCTV still doesn’t bother with peak search…), but it’s not that bad. Same for picture quality, somewhat blurry but watchable. The backgrounds are beautiful.
I made a DVD from this so I can watch it from bed, and it turned out surprisingly well. That’s what I call quality leisure time!

The second one is the recent performance of Beijing’s Youth Jingju Troupe with Du Zhe, Li Yang and Dou Xiaoxuan in the leading roles, and Li Guang as senior advisor. These files are quite pretty, and the production all in all is also fine. Here you can find a great set of stage pictures: bbs.cntv.cn

(1)
→ 京剧《野猪林》Yezhulin (Wildboar Forest) : [DOWNLOAD] 469 MB
2010/03/27 , Tianjin Binhu Theatre

Cast:
Lin Chong: Wang Ping (王平)
Mrs. Lin: Wang Yan (王艳)
Monk Lu Zhishen: Wang Jiaqing (王嘉庆)
High official Gao Qiu: Shi Wei (时维)
Lu Qian: Shao Hailong (邵海龙)
Gao’s son, Gao Shide: Han Qing (韩庆)
Rui Zhenqi (芮振起), Chen Ai (陈嫒), Zhao Hua (赵华)

(2)
→ 京剧《野猪林》Yezhulin (Wildboar Forest) : [PART1] | [PART2] 666, 406MB
2011/08/09, Mei Lanfang Grand Theater, Beijing

Cast:
Lin Chong: Du Zhe (杜喆)
Mrs. Lin: Dou Xiaoxuan (窦晓璇)
Lu Zhishen: Li Yang (李扬)
Gao Qiu: Jing Baoqi (景宝琪)
Lu Qian: Li Dan (李丹)
Gao Shide: Mei Qingyang (梅庆羊)
Zhang Bei (张蓓), Zhang Kai (张凯), Huang Chen (黄晨), Wang Xuehua (王雪桦), Zhai Gang (翟岗), Liang Junwei (梁军委), Zhang Mushen (张木申), Qin Hongpeng (秦鸿鹏), Cao Yangyang (曹阳阳), Qin Wei (秦伟)
Percussion: Wang Wei (王葳), Qin: Wang Fulong (王福隆)

(bump)

To cheer me up, CCTV11 will live broadcast full-male military jingju Lian Huan Tao today, moreover the cast is splendid.

I was always lazy to figure out the exact storyline of this play, since besides some amazing acrobatic action, it’s mainly featuring a half dozen of casually dressed generals discussing strategic matters on stage. It tells the story of Dou Erdun, a Robin Hood-like hero during Emperor Kangxi’s reign.

Cast:
Shang Changrong, Wang Ping, Shi Xiaoliang, Wang Jiaqing, Huang Qifeng, Wang Wenbin, Dou Qian, Zhao Hua, Wei Yigang, Wang Pengfei (尚长荣、王平、石晓亮、王嘉庆、黄齐峰、王文斌、窦骞、赵华、魏以刚、王鹏飞)

Download:
CNTV: [1] | [2]
 1.2GB

Wang Ping interviewed. I don’t understand, I don’t understand! 

Trailer. Compulsory.

One of the first stage photos. This costume was beautiful. One more bonus point for not having those nasty long fingernails. Western eye-friendly. 

Tianjin Jingju Theater’s contribution to the 6th China Peking Opera Art Festival was a new edition of Qin Xianglian, titled《香莲案》Xianglian An (Case of Xianglian).

I didn’t watch it yet, but the costumes are different than usual. Lü Yang (吕洋) plays Qin Xianglian, Ling Ke (凌珂) Chen Shimei, Wang Jiaqing (王嘉庆) Judge Bao and Wang Zhigang (王志钢) Han Qi.
I like Wang Zhigang. I just read a “review” on Wang Jiaqing (scroll down for example video), commenter said he “already surpassed Meng Guanglu and runs An Ping close”, so let’s see!

Download:
CCTV: [1-3] [2-3] [3-3] [int.]

Interview is included, Wang Ping mentions as particularly interesting thing about the play that it’s featuring many schools, some of them differ from to the usual setup, i.e. Lü Yang: Cheng school, Ling Ke: Yu school, Wang Zhigang: Qi school. Besides this I understood only the conjunctions, but check out Mr. Wang’s necktie and Lü Yang’s bun.

Photos: 戏剧像素