famous synopses:
Crafty Princess, A(Diaoman Gongzhu):Princess Fengxia of the Huaxia Kingdom is artful and wilful. On her wedding day, her husband, Meng Feixiong, a border marshal, means to subdue her by forcing her to enter his house on her knees. He threatens her with a golden mace given to him by the emperor. Fengxia is indignant and that very night she shuts her door and defies Feixiong. After lots of twists and turns, both of them realize they can not enjoy true happiness unless they respect each other.
Fatal Opera, The(Guan Hanqing):Dramatist Guan Hanqing writes the opera "Wronged Dou Er" and casts actress Zhu Lianxiu as the lead. Because the opera criticizes social evils, the local authorities sentence Guan and Zhu to death. In prison, they fall in love. Because the local people protest their death sentence, authorities banish Guan to a desolate place instead. In tears, Zhu gives her lover a farewell dinner.
Search the School(Sou Shuyuan):The daughter of the Hainan governor loses her kite, which is found by Zhang Yimin, a student at the Qiongtai School. Zhang writes a poem on the kite and then returns it to Cuilian, a maid of the governor. When the governor finds the poem on the kite, he suspects that Cuilian has had a love affair with Zhang. The governor beats Cuilian black and blue and then locks her inn a cabin. Cuilian disguises herself as a man and escapes. On the way to the Qiongtai School, she encounters Xie Bao, a teacher there, who takes Cuilian to the school. Hearing the news, the governor leads his men to search the school. Xie helps Cuilian and Zhang escape the school. In the end, the two get married.
In the history of the Cantonese opera, the two decades before the Pacific War have long been considered its golden age. As an operatic genre derivative from other regional theaters performing in Guangdong since the Ming-Qing era, the Cantonese opera evolved, in the 1920s and 1930s, into a very distinctive art form with the use of the Cantonese dialect in both sung and spoken passages, the invention of new aria types, and other unique performance styles. Instrumental to this development was the formation of the so-called Sheng-Gang Troupes based in Guangzhouand Hong Kong.
These troupes were undoubtedly successful in capturing a large local audience, and the great popularity of their famous actors like Xue Jiaoxian and Ma Shizeng attested to the rise of a mass entertainment in the urban milieu of Guangzhouand Hong Kong, and also to the vitality of an unfolding regional culture and identity centered on the twin cities. No less important in underlying the success of these troupes was their overseas circuitry which took them to perform frequently in the Cantonese communities in Southeast Asia and North America. These trips were rewarding not only financially but culturally, affording the opportunities for exposure to new theatrical practices and ideas. Moreover, they renewed and consolidated the imagination of a Cantonese identity among the fellow natives overseas.
