Voices and stages

Consort Yu sings

The first recording is from Farewell My Concubine, a Peking opera made famous from 1922 by Mei Lanfang (1894–1961), the most celebrated player of women's roles of his century, and himself a man. Here Consort Yu tries to cheer the king on his last night, singing in xipi, with the small, high fiddle called the jinghu following her line. A few minutes later in the same story she walks out alone into the dark; you can hear that moment too, by the same singer, Song Ruoxuan.

These recordings were made in Beijing in 2017 for a music-research collection. They are among the clearest jingju recordings on Kotone, and a good place to start.

Four kinds of voice

Peking opera sorts its characters into four role types. Sheng are men; dan are women; jing are men of fierce or upright character with painted faces; chou are clowns. Each type has its own way of speaking, moving and above all singing, and a performer trains for a lifetime in one of them.

So you can tell who is on stage by sound alone. The dan, like Consort Yu, sings high and fine. The second recording is a laosheng, an older man: Tian Hao sings Zhuge Liang, the strategist who bluffs an advancing army from the wall of an undefended city until it turns away. It is perhaps the best-known aria for this kind of voice, plain, steady and unhurried.

The third is a jing, the painted face: Judge Bao, the incorruptible judge of Kaifeng, about to pass sentence. The voice is broad and ringing, meant to fill a theatre. It is sung here unaccompanied by a woman. For most of the Qing dynasty women were banned from the stage and men played every part; the ban was lifted only in 1912. Today the voice and the role, not the singer's own body, decide who you are hearing.

Two families of tunes

Most Peking opera arias are built from two families of tunes. Xipi is brighter and more open; erhuang, which came from folk tunes of Hubei, is lower and suits sorrow and reflection. Each runs at several set speeds, from slow to fast, and at a free, unmeasured one. The drummer, not the singer, decides when to change.

You can hear this in Judge Bao's aria. It opens free, settles into a steady beat, then speeds up as his anger rises. Without the band, the beat is carried by the voice alone.

Older stages

Peking opera is young as Chinese theatre goes, about two hundred years old. Behind it stands Kunqu, refined in the region of Suzhou from the 14th century, led by the bamboo flute, and one of the oldest forms of Chinese opera still performed; Kotone does not yet have a recording of it.

In Japan, nō took shape in the 14th century under Kan'ami and his son Zeami. Its sung text, utai, is chanted by the actors and by a chorus, who often sing a character's lines while the main actor dances. Amateurs have long studied utai on its own, without the stage, and it was recorded early: Kotone has an early disc of Hagoromo, the play of the celestial maiden who must dance to win back her feather robe.

One voice for everyone

Japan's puppet theatre, now called bunraku, turns the idea around. In the 1680s the chanter Takemoto Gidayū founded a theatre in Osaka and, with the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, made it famous. His style of chanting took his name, gidayū. The chanter, the tayū, sits beside the stage with a shamisen player and voices every character, man or woman, young or old, and the narration as well, while the puppets act.

The last recording is a woman chanter, Toyotake Roshō (1874–1930), the most celebrated of her day, in January 1923. She tells the Horikawa scene of a play in which a monkey trainer's household is drawn into the fate of two doomed lovers. It is an old disc, but listen to the voice: it becomes the household, the lovers and the storyteller in turn.

詞語

行當 hángdang

role type: the kinds of character in Chinese opera, each with its own voice, movement and make-up

西皮 / 二黃 xīpí / èrhuáng

the two families of tunes that most Peking opera arias are built from

謡 utai

the chanted text of nō, sung by the actors and a chorus

太夫 tayū

the chanter of Japan's puppet theatre, who voices every character and the narration

在別處聆聽

• UNESCO: Kun Qu opera, with photographs and a film
• UNESCO: Nôgaku theatre, with nō on stage, its chorus and drums
• Japan Arts Council: Invitation to Bunraku, on the chanters, the shamisen and the puppets