More on the Huang Mei Opera

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I remember watching Lin Dai's ground breaking movie The Kingdom and the Beauty many years after the film was made. After all, the movie was made in 1959, before I was born and while the movie popularised the Huang Mei Opera, this artform which was a part of the operatic genre at the Anqing region of southwestern Anhui province has long peaked with the making of Ivy Ling Po's star vehicle, Love Eterne in 1963. The Huang Mei Opera is said to have first appeared as a simple drama of song and dance at the Huangmei county in the Lanyang plateau in southeastern Hubei province a couple of hundred years ago.The music was simple and short initially and was performed only by roving troupes. When immigrants from Mainland China poured into Hong Kong in the 50s, they brought the art along. The talented Lanping Chou rewrote the music style, incorporatingWestern musical instruments,making the tempo livelier and faster. Many Huang Mei movies were made, particularly by Hong Kong Shaw Studios starring Huang Mei Queen, Ivy Ling Po and many other popular stars like Li Ching and Betty Loh Ti, attracting Chinese audiences all over the world... Have a dose of Huang Mei Opera...

Kingdom and the Beauty(江山美人)...






Love Eterne (梁山伯與祝英台0 ...





Comments

Liudmila said…
Thank you for this post, this art seems very interesting for me.
21 December 2008 at 13:27
footiam said…
Hua Mei Opera is still performed in concerts especially for the older generations; and the movie Queen , Ivy LIng Po is still active although nearing 70. Personally, I like the melody and the movie, Love Eterne is a Chinese classic and one woman in Taiwan had seen it over a hundred times. I have watched it four or five times, and I still like the simple love story and the simple way the story is presented.
23 December 2008 at 07:01
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