How was Haimen Mountain Opera born?

In the middle of Qing Dynasty, there were a large number of immigrants in Haimen, Jiangsu Province, who introduced Wu Ge to the sandy area. After oral singing handed down from generation to generation by people in Haimen and other places, it was constantly revised and created, and gradually developed into Haimen Mountain Opera.

1935, Guan Jiange and Ding Zhongguo collected Haimen folk songs and successfully arranged "Jiangkou Love Song", which was later edited into an album. The following year, the long narrative folk song "Matchmaker" collected by Guan Jiange was published in Wuhan "Heaven and Earth Man" magazine.

After the founding of New China, local amateur performances were very active, and colorful new folk songs were developed, which reflected the real life of ordinary people at that time, praised labor and love, and criticized various unreasonable phenomena. Haimen folk songs were officially put on the stage.

In the 1950s, an amateur performance team composed of Lu and others compiled and created the first Haimen folk opera Taomi Ji based on the narrative folk song Yaochuanlang, which was well received by the local people.

From 65438 to 0957, Taomi Ji participated in national folk music and dance performances. 1In August, 958, Haimen County formally established a professional Haimen Folk Song Troupe. Since then, Haimen Mountain Opera has emerged as a new kind of drama.

After the reform and opening up, Haimen Folk Song Research Association was established, and the first Haimen Folk Song Art Festival was held in Haimen County. More than 50 singers sang more than 40 folk songs.

Song Weixiang sang Haimen folk song "Little Sister Takes a fancy to the Boatman" and went to Beijing to perform with Nantong Folk Art Troupe. Haimen Folk Song Art Festival marks a new stage in the development of Haimen folk song culture.

Haimen folk songs are divided into two categories, one is improvisational folk songs, which are mostly created casually during the slack season. The lyrics are 4, 6 and 8 sentences, such as "Black clouds in the northwest are independent", "Looking at wild flowers across the river" and "The southeast wind is cool and urgent". The second category is narrative folk songs. There are dozens or even hundreds of lyrics above 10, such as selling peaches, rocking boats, embroidered shoes, pulling garlic seedlings and so on.

A series of folk songs in narrative folk songs, the characters and plots are both coherent and independent, such as Matchmaker. Haimen folk songs mainly reflect the love life of men and women, such as "Little Sister takes a fancy to the boatman" and "Folk Songs of Lovers".

Some folk songs reflect the hardships of farmers' lives and show their hatred of landlords' exploitation, such as "Looking to the sky and the sun" and "Hard work"; There is also a string of ancient things turned into folk songs, such as Cross Song.

Among the local operas cultivated after the founding of New China, Longjiang Opera in the north, White Opera in the south, Dragon Opera in the west and Haimen Mountain Opera widely circulated in the east are the leading traditional operas in China.

1955, Lu Jiang, a famous playwright of Haimen folk songs, adapted the narrative folk song "Rocking the Boat Lang" into the first folk drama "Taomi Ji", which was premiered by Zhongxing Town Amateur Troupe.

1956 participated in Haimen county cultural performance during the Spring Festival, and was later performed by Maozhen Amateur Troupe, and successively participated in performances in various cities and provincial capitals. 1957 In March, Taomiji went to Beijing to participate in the second national folk song and dance performance.

1958 In August, Haimen Folk Song Troupe was established. Over the years, this troupe has staged more than 200 plays. Among them, he created more than 30 plays, such as Taomi Ji, Picking Peaches, Two Daughters-in-law, Yin Hua Girl, Qinglong Jiao and Song for Mom.

At the end of the 20th century, Haimen Folk Song Troupe went to Beijing twice and staged national operas "Qinglong Jiao" and "Song for Mom". The performance scope of Haimen Mountain Opera includes not only Haimen, but also the whole Nantong area and Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Wu dialect areas.

Haimenshan Troupe is not only a professional opera group, but also a carrier for the spread of Haimen folk songs, a base for the development of folk songs and a talent pool for folk song actors.

Haimen Mountain opera is beautiful and simple, fresh and smooth, with strong local flavor and distinctive local characteristics. There are more than 60 kinds of tunes commonly used in Haimen Mountain Opera, among which the basic tunes are folk songs, harmony and coloratura, and the emergence is in contrast with the tone. It consists of two plate structures: plate cavity and joint bending.

Haimenshan Opera has nine types of ballads, such as adagio, middle board, clear board, flowing board, couplet board, tight board, overlapping board, fast-pulling and slow-singing, and six types of boards, such as flower adagio, middle board, clear board, wide board, cloud board and simple board.

Mountain opera absorbs rap music in Jiaoguan minor, some for lyric and some for narrative. For example, the melody of Mid-Autumn Festival is full of emotion and profound artistic conception, which is most suitable for singing and dancing; Xiao Lang Il's tunes are lively and elastic; The melody of sachet is melodious and easy to catchy; The tune of Buddha's prayer is flexible, long or short, tight or loose, which can express a happy mood. Playing cherry tune or even drum tune, good at singing and expressing love between men and women; In addition, there are melodies such as card classics and Xiantao tunes, which are smooth and suitable for villain performances.

The vocal cavity of the mountain opera is a pentatonic scale, and some of them have been added with clear angle, sign change and palace tune. Because of the outstanding tone of feather tune, the musical singing of Haimen Mountain Opera has formed a unique style. The method of moistening the cavity is closely combined with the use of interjections, such as hi, yo, ya, ah, Luo and so on. , making Haimen folk songs colorful.

Haimen gongs and drums are very distinctive in mountain operas, but they can only be used simultaneously in qu cards or tunes. As for the commonly used gongs and drums, according to the Beijing opera gongs and drums, they are slightly modified to adapt to different places.

The main musical instruments of the band are basic musical instruments and color musical instruments, such as Hu, flute and pipa. With dulcimer, cello, sanxian, sheng, as the basic musical instruments; The remaining instruments are suona, violin, western woodwind and electronic organ. The volume and music of the main erhu are louder and crisper.

Mountain opera