Creative revisions of Peking Opera 京劇掀開新篇章

賴麗霞

Peking Opera is a form of Chinese opera that combines music， vocal performance， dance and acrobatics. In 2010， it was inscribed（刻） on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. To help revive Peking Opera for the modern society， professionals are making more effort to win attention from the public and increase the charm of this cultural essence.

In recent years， Peking Opera enthusiasts have been impressed by a brand-new art form， which introduces an ancient Chinese musical instrument to its orchestra. It is called guzheng， and has more than 2，500 years of history.

Shang Jingya is a young guzheng player in the Beijing Peking Opera Theatre. She has been pivotal（核心的） in introducing the instrument to the orchestra of Peking Opera. She says guzheng has a marvelous（非凡的） musical capability and can convey a wide range of emotions， which helps audiences understand the emotional world of the character and strengthen the atmosphere created in the story.

Farewell My Concubine was the first new Peking Opera that Shang brought to the stage in 2016. guzheng is the only instrument in this performance that accompanies the singing， so it is very different from the traditional version. Shang is relieved when her new experiment appears to have won recognition， with audiences always giving them a big round of applause.

Some may wonder what inspired Shang to come up with the ingenious（新穎獨(dú)特的） idea. She says studying guzheng as her major for four years at her undergraduate university， the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts， helped her obtain comprehensive knowledge of Peking Opera.

The tertiary educational institution has a profound culture of helping students develop their capacity to bring body， voice and spirit together. For years， it has trained many famous opera singers and actors.

With this kind of cultural background， Shang was able to experience the beauty and essence of opera. She was motivated to carry out a brave experiment to combine it with the instrument she had learned in her whole life.

The revival of the Peking Opera has been made possible thanks to passionate professionals like Shang Jingya. As China， a country with a long history and rich culture， is facing the challenge of preserving many of its traditional art forms， we hope more open-minded people will join their efforts with more innovative ideas to protect the countrys cultural treasures and help pass them down to future generations.

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