Beijing Opera

National Opera of China Mainland

Beijing Opera is a pure National Chinese Opera; has existed for more than 200 years ago. Nowadays Beijing Opera becomes one of the rare performances. Origin of Beijing Opera was in Anhui province and Hubei province in Southeast part of China then came to Beijing in 1790 on a performance tour the order of Imperial Court. The role play of the opera is full of cultural fact of China, accompanying harmonious music, unique singing and attractively decorated costumes. The Beijing Opera band almost consisted of orchestra and percussion band. In the past this kind of opera mostly performed in the open-air stage market, streets, tea houses and temple courtyards so the performers had to play loudly in order to be heard over the crowds.

There are 4 main of roles in Beijing Opera

Sheng - Leading male actor
Laosheng - Old man
Xiaosheng - Young man
Wusheng - Fighter, Military man
Wawasheng - Kid
These roles play usually not paint face for the performance but except for Hongsheng who'd got red paint face for the role Guanyu and Zhao Kuangyin.

Dan - The female roles, female impersonator.
Laodan - The old ladies
Caidan - The female comedians.
Wudan - Military or non-military women capable of martial arts.
Qingyi - Respectable and decent ladies in elegant costumes.
Huadan - lively and clever young girls, usually in short costumes.

Jing - mostly male; warriors, heroes, statesmen, adventurers and demons. "Zhengjing," "Fujing" and "Wujing

Chou - Clowns with a white patch on the nose.

Facial Painting in Beijing Opera

Facial painting in Beijing Opera is unique makeup in the world; is one of the most meaningful component for this performance beacuse each colours have their own meaning in themselves, this is also one kind of chinese art the colour for paint will represent the character, personality and emotion of the performer. Example for the meaning of the colour; yellow and white represent sly, red stands for honesty, integrity and loyalty, black means bravery and wisdom, blue and green indicate the energetic and ambitious character of rebellious heroes and gold and silver represent mystic or super-natural power.

Today's Beijing Opera

At present Beijing Opera'a audiences mostly are old people, one day this beautiful art may vanish. Youth might not like Beijing Opera so much beacause nowadays there're a lot of kind of media which more modern and some may think that Beijing Opera is old-fashioned but for those the audiences who so deep in love with Beijing Opera, this kind of art will never vanish but always be beautiful in their heart.