Threebird
Oh cool! Awesome video quality. Thanks so much for sharing it!
When I was a child there would be Teochew Opera performances for the temple near our house, and I loved going there with my parents and grandparents, and siblings!
Teochew opera stage
a stage was set up with wooden poles in an open field in front of the temple, a few days before the performances, very rudimentary. I remember hearing the grown-ups talking about the collapse of one stage in another venue. If you can see the image I have linked, you can see why that would happen. It had a backstage, and 2 small spaces on either side of the stage for the musicians. The performances would last about 3 days. During the day, around noon, there would be a very short sketch or ritual by the clown character, which was my favourite character. No singing, just spoken word and movement, and some simple accompanying music. There are different clown characters in Teochew opera. The one in the noon sketches was often the lower-class character that was meant to be humourous. The real shows were the night performances. The troupe would play well-known or popular Chinese legends. I loved being there because of the atmosphere, the snacks from stalls we would otherwise never have. (not sure if @CeeJay might have seen one of these when he was living in Singapore?)
Here are some more images of what I experienced as a child…if I am doing the linking right…
outdoor Teochew opera in Singapore 1
outdoor Teochew Opera 2
The cross-gender acting part - i used to wonder why the female actors playing male characters had such high pitch voices. LOL. Some of them did. In general, the female actors playing male characters sang in a slightly lower range.
There is a famous Chinese legend called The Butterfly Lovers that is quite appropriate for this week's theme.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai is set in the Eastern Jin dynasty (266–420 AD).[5]^
Zhu Yingtai is the ninth child and only daughter of the wealthy Zhu family of Shangyu, Zhejiang. Although women are traditionally discouraged from taking up scholarly pursuits, Zhu manages to convince her father to allow her to attend classes in disguise as a man. During her journey to Hangzhou, she meets Liang Shanbo, a scholar from Kuaiji (present-day Shaoxing). They chat and feel a strong affinity for each other at their first meeting. Hence, they gather some soil as incense and take an oath of fraternity in the pavilion of a wooden bridge.[6]^
They study together for the next three years in school and Zhu gradually falls in love with Liang. Although Liang equals Zhu in their studies, he is still a bookworm and fails to notice that his classmate is a woman.
One day, Zhu receives a letter from her father, asking her to return home as soon as possible. Zhu has no choice but to pack her belongings immediately and bid Liang farewell…." you can read the rest of the legend here.
And here is the legend performed by one of the many troupes that had performed it.
I might try to do a little bit of the singing from the opera….maybe….
