How did the earliest women's group in China come into being?

Among the traditional folk arts in China, Yue Opera has a striking uniqueness?

Butterfly lovers, Ann can see that I am a man and a woman.

That's right. The gifted scholars and beautiful women in Yue Opera are all women who have taken off their makeup. As the second largest opera in China and the king of local operas, almost all of the existing 160 professional Yue Opera troupes are women's troupes.

This is really different from other domestic brother dramas.

As local operas, Pingju Opera and Huangmei Opera are mostly performed by men and women on the same stage, and their roles and genders are consistent with those of the actors. Peking Opera has a long tradition of male Dan, and a large number of male Dan artists such as Mei Lanfang have been born, which is completely opposite to the development path of Yue Opera.

Why is the Peking Opera male Dan Yue Opera in the movie Farewell My Concubine so special? How did it embark on the unique "all-female group" road?

Urban opera originated in the countryside.

The early "Yue Opera" is far from what it is today.

/kloc-More than 0/00 years ago, in the second half of the 9th century, in the backcountry of Shengxian County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, a kind of folk quyi with simple techniques was born, commonly known as "singing books on the ground".

Because the main audience is farmers, the theme of singing books is mostly taken from rural daily life. Trying to cater to the interests of farmers means that Sheng Xian Opera, like all local operas in the late Qing Dynasty, is particularly good at arranging obscene jokes with strong tastes, and there are many bridges that explicitly imply genitals.

During the slack season, a group of amateur artists improvised a huqin at the entrance of Qiaotou Village, which made everyone laugh? This is the predecessor of Yue Opera, and its form is roughly similar to today's Northeast Wild Erren Zhuan.

Local operas full of yellow jokes have brought joy to monotonous rural life and frightened local officials in charge of education, so they have been repeatedly banned by the government.

1842, the Qing Dynasty was defeated in the Opium War, and Shanghai was forced to open a port for trade. Since then, it has gradually developed into the largest industrial and commercial city in the Far East. The superior modern urban environment has attracted immigrants from all over the world, especially people from all walks of life in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

At the beginning of the 20th century, with the pace of people from eastern Zhejiang going north to Shanghai to make a living, Sheng Xian Opera also came to Shanghai, which was nicknamed "local class" by Shanghai locals.

In "Ten Li Yang Chang", the original rural drama will be completely transformed. Like many local operas that entered the metropolis at that time, "Du Ban" was also facing a major survival test. Cities are no better than rural areas. The upper-middle class citizens who often go to the theatre have strong financial resources and a high level of education, so it is difficult for them to accept vulgar and pornographic jokes in operas.

Perhaps more importantly, the social status of urban women has been greatly improved at this time, and a large number of female opera fans have emerged. It is particularly inappropriate to use naked pornography as a selling point.

In this environment, whoever can respond well to the expectations of the urban middle class and urban women and better meet their daily leisure and entertainment needs will achieve greater development. Not all local operas can adapt to changes in the environment. Yuyao Opera, which came to Shanghai earlier than Yue Opera, did not change its rural habits for a long time, and even became a notorious obscene opera in the public's mouth. At that time, the drama critics did not hesitate to ridicule it:

The "Yuyao's" yangko class and parrot play are the least valuable in Yue Opera, which is hard to be elegant and has always been despised by people. The reason is to sing a vulgar and obscene sentence? Most of the people in charge are unemployed. This is immoral and unimaginable.

Unlike the "worthless" Yuyao Opera, Shengzhou Yue Opera Troupe has many pursuits. At that time, the mainstream drama in Shanghai was Peking Opera. After hundreds of years of development, Beijing Opera has formed its own unique aesthetic, that is, it pays special attention to various performance skills such as characters, singing and martial arts, while relatively ignoring narrative and drama.

Beijing Opera and Wushu

In order to compete with Beijing Opera, the Yue Opera Troupe made great efforts to learn many stylized performance skills of Beijing Opera, while the repertoire was simply copied in large quantities. At the same time, we gradually optimized the stage scenery and costume props, initially got rid of the image of the rural grassroots team and gradually gained a foothold in Shanghai.

Since then, more and more people have studied drama in the countryside. According to the survey of 1935, there are only 400,000 people in Sheng County, and more than 20,000 people are out of town. However, after a long period of performing arts practice, Beijing opera is far superior to Shaoxing opera in terms of singing, figure and martial arts.

Until the 1920s, Yue Opera was always at a disadvantage in the competition. For a long time, it can only be performed in a small theater with less than 500 people, but it can't reach a bigger stage. It was not until the all-female class of Yue Opera appeared on the beach that the situation finally changed.

Women win the box office.

Troupe composed of women, known as "Women's Troupe", has a long tradition in China. Raising a private female troupe was once the fashion pursued by scholars in the south of the Yangtze River. But in the Qing dynasty, the policy environment suddenly became less friendly to women's acting.

In order to pay close attention to the construction of a clean government, many Qing emperors have made important instructions to prohibit officials from whoring. The definition of prostitutes in Qing Dynasty is very broad. It is considered that female classes are "called opera girls, the same as prostitutes" and women are prohibited from acting four times. Under the pressure, the popular female class once disappeared. It was not until more than a hundred years later, when the Republic of China was founded and commercial theaters were reopened to actresses, that adult women's group appeared all over the country again.

When the women's class of Yue Opera took to the Shanghai stage, it was already in the twenties and thirties of last century, which was a little late, but the development momentum really surprised people at that time. As early as the mid-1930s, the female class of Yue Opera had been able to perform in large and medium-sized theaters with more than 700 people, far exceeding the scale of the male class in its heyday.

The famous "Ten Sisters of Yue Opera"

In 1938 after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the women's Banyue Opera ushered in a miracle of blowout development. According to records, during August/938 in Shanghai 12, there were fixed performance places for various operas, including 2 Peking Opera, 3 Divine Comedy, Kunqu Opera 1 and Women's Yueju Opera 12, which were evenly matched with Beijing Opera. However, by September of 1939, the number of performances of women's Yue Opera had increased to more than 20, far exceeding that of Beijing Opera.

According to19411According to the statistics of Yue Opera Daily, there were as many as 36 women's Yue Opera troupes in Shanghai at that time, ranking first in both the number of troupes and the number of performance venues, making it the largest drama in Shanghai.

However, while the female class of Yue Opera flourished, the male class of Yue Opera quietly withdrew from the historical stage. The ending of yin flourishing and yang declining can be traced back to the completely different survival strategies of men and women. At this time, the social atmosphere in Shanghai was completely new, and a large number of female audiences poured into the theater, which fundamentally changed the ecology of the drama consumption market. For women in new cities at that time, going to the theater was an important urban life experience.

Different from men's preference for martial arts and old-fashioned dramas, female audiences like "good-looking" from the beginning, enthusiastically pursue Dandan and Xiao Sheng, and have a strong preference for romantic dramas in subject matter.

Unlike the male class, which deliberately moved closer to Beijing Opera and copied the narrative and stylized performance techniques of the emperors and generals in Beijing Opera, the female class has a deeper understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of Yue Opera: martial arts and figure are not as good as Beijing Opera, but the singing is fresh and natural; The performance is real and touching, especially suitable for interpreting the love story between young men and women, especially attracting female audiences.

Because of its uniform cast, women's Yue Opera is easy to interpret the love between men and women in marriage in more emotional forms.

Based on this basic understanding, the women's class of Yueju Opera actively keeps pace with the times, taking Hollywood movies and dramas that were popular in Shanghai at that time as the study objects, boldly innovating the performance form of Yueju Opera, absorbing the beautiful and delicate characters of traditional Kunqu Opera, and developing a new female performance style suitable for expressing the theme of love.

In the eyes of many female audiences at that time, men's romantic dramas were not as natural and cordial as women's.

Moist girls, playing the role of ladies, talented people and beautiful women, have their own unique freshness and loveliness. The performance of the women's class of Yue Opera perfectly fits this kind of drama-watching psychology, which makes the female citizens in Shanghai fall for it and never tire of watching it.

Mao, the first student of contemporary Yue Opera, said in an interview that several Hua Dan in the troupe never dared to look her in the eye. "She said she was embarrassed to look at you. They may imagine me as the prince charming in their hearts, a feeling that they think these eyes on the stage are too charming. "

At that time, some young opera fans in Shanghai also organized large and small opera fan clubs, carried out various social activities and organized amateur performance rehearsals. More importantly, a large number of intellectual women have become lovers of Yue Opera, actively making suggestions for the innovation of Yue Opera. Among female opera fans, Chen, the first female screenwriter and the first radio announcer of Yue Opera, has emerged one after another. The participation of generations of middle-class female opera fans has improved the social status of Yue Opera and given it the motivation to continue to improve.

Opera fans dressed in Yue Opera. Yue opera makeup studies film and drama makeup.

Soft and natural advantages, basically no makeup of other dramas. 1By the end of the 1930s, most of the old Yue operas, such as Hosta, Pearl Tower, Double Pearl Phoenix, Sangu, Aquilaria Fragrant Fan and Jade, had taken shape.

In the 1940s, actresses combined novel stage art and fluent performance style with the love theme of anti-ceremony, and successively created more than 100 new works of Yue Opera, such as The Story of Liang Zhu, A Dream of Red Mansions and The Prince of the Desert, which finally ushered in the prosperous era of Yue Opera.

The local opera, which originated in the rural areas of Shengxian County, has completed a gorgeous turn. Without the interaction and cooperation between actresses and female audiences, there may be no new Yue Opera. At that time, people have a deep understanding of this:

Women are advocates of Yue Opera, which is not only for wives and grandmothers, but also for prostitutes, dancers and guide girls.