The five-act opera Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang is adapted from Li Ji's long poem of the same name. Created on 1950 and premiered in Beijing in the same year.
Plot: 1930, Dead Sheep Bay in northern Shaanxi suffered from drought. Forced by the landlord, Mr. Cui, to do long-term work, he often helped his neighbor Li Derui cut wood and draw water, and gradually fell in love with Li's daughter. Mr Cui couldn't flirt with Xiangxiang, so he went home and beat Wang Gui out. The tortured Wang Gui secretly joined the Red Guards led by the Party, and was arrested after being discovered by the landlord. Xiang Xiang led the guerrillas to arrive in time and rescued Wang Gui. However, the Kuomintang troops counterattacked and entered Zhuang, and the guerrillas temporarily retreated. Mr. Cui robbed the gun again, feasted and drank with the bandits. Unexpectedly, guerrillas fell from the sky, and this evil devil finally became a prisoner of the people. Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang finally got married happily.
The drama uses the material of folk songs in northern Shaanxi, combines the national music language with the recitative techniques of western opera, and creates many recitative tunes with national style. For example, when Liu learned that the landlord Mr. Cui was going to kill, a narrative tone vividly expressed his anxiety and almost crazy emotions, which reached the climax of the tense drama conflict. It is also successful in expressing characters' personality, feelings and plot development. For example, Li Xiangxiang sang "A pair of double-headed barrels", which focused on her lovely and kind personality and loyalty to love. First of all, behind the scenes, the duet of Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang is in the style of "faithful travel", and its music is beautiful and moving, showing their enthusiasm and loyal feelings. In the music describing villains, the techniques of expressing villains in operas such as Shaanxi Opera were absorbed, which made Mr. Cui's image abhorrent. Besides, "Wang Gui is a Good Boy" and "A Red Flag" are also excellent arias. The preface adopts the comprehensive methods of orchestra, solo, chorus and duet, which makes the music of the whole play colorful and very moving.
The play was translated and staged in Romania.
China Railway Art Theatre once directed and performed the ballet Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang. Screenwriter Zhang, composer Qiu Shusong, directors Zhang and Wang Gong, starring Li Rong (Solitary Forest) and Liu Yunming. The drama has many characteristics: the music is always based on folk music in northern Shaanxi and full of life flavor. The performance combines folk dance with classical dance, and naturally adopts the movements of lifting, rotating and jumping commonly used in foreign ballet, which shows the plot and the spiritual outlook of the characters.
Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang.
Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang, a long narrative poem, was written on 1925, which is Li Ji's masterpiece.
Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang have the reputation of "Long Yuefu". In the long poem, there is such a tortuous story:1During the drought in northern Shaanxi in 929, Master Cui, the bully landlord of Dead Sheep Bay, came to forcibly collect the rent, and his father was killed alive because he could not pay the rent. Since then, 13-year-old Wang Gui has been taken by the landlord as a long-term worker to pay off debts. In a miserable life, King Gui and Li Xiangxiang, the daughter of a poor old man, had a pure love. However, the landlord Mr. Cui tried to occupy Xiangxiang. First, he wants to seduce Xiangxiang by eating, drinking and wearing clothes. After being rejected, he secretly wanted to kill Wang Gui. At this time, a * * * production party rose in northern Shaanxi, and Wang Gui, who wanted to avenge his father, secretly joined the Red Guards. When Mr Cui heard that he had participated in the revolution, he tied him up and beat him. At this time, Xiang Xiang risked her life to run to the guerrillas to deliver letters. Guerrillas broke into Dead Sheep Bay, and the poor got their fields and houses. Wang Gui was also saved, and finally married Xiang Xiang happily. However, it didn't take long for Mr. Cui to return to Dead Sheep Bay with the White Army's counterattack, to take cruel class revenge on the peasants, and to take advantage of the opportunity of being transferred with the guerrillas to take him as a concubine. In the face of Mr. Cui's bullying, Xiangxiang would rather die than surrender. Just as Mr. Cui gave a big banquet and forced his marriage to be fragrant, King Gui and the guerrillas broke into Dead Sheep Bay again and captured Mr. Cui alive. King Gui and Xiang Xiang reunited.
From the content point of view, the greatest feature of this long poem is to closely combine the fate of the protagonist with the fate of the revolution, and regard the life course of the protagonist and the battle course of the revolution as the same process, so that readers can clearly see that the liberation of farmers and the happiness of love and marriage are closely linked with the revolution. Through the tortuous and touching love story of Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang, the work shows that "the poor can't turn over without revolution" and "the poor can't turn over without revolution", and Xiangxiang and Wang Gui can't get married, which vividly shows that the revolutionary struggle led by the * * * production party is the guarantee for farmers to turn over and get happiness.
The most outstanding achievement of the long poem "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang" is that it has successfully adopted the national form and creatively studied and inherited the excellent tradition of folk songs.
In form, the long poem creatively uses the form of northern Shaanxi folk song "Xintian". The so-called "Xintianyou", also known as "Shuntianyou", is the most popular folk song in northern Shaanxi, Jinsui and Inner Mongolia. The outstanding features of Xin Tian You are: generally speaking, there is no complete story, the content is relatively simple, and more shows the love between men and women, which is not original and has the nature of Mu Ye folk songs. Generally speaking, there are two sentences in form, "one sentence is better than the other, and the two sentences together mean the same thing, which is relatively short." Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang "have absorbed a lot of nutrition from Xintianyou, and many places have adopted the forms and methods of Xintianyou, but at the same time they have made some breakthroughs. First of all, long poems are not limited to expressing love, but combine love with revolution, which not only depicts several fierce struggle scenes, but also successfully shapes the images of Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang. This broke the traditional theme of Xintianyou and expanded its expressive force. Secondly, the long poem inherits and innovates the form of "believing in heaven". It is a major artistic feature of Xin Tian You to use the technique of competition. Long poems fully inherit this feature, and almost all kinds of metaphors are arranged from beginning to end, and these metaphors are both popular and novel. For example, write Xiang Xiang: "A pair of big eyes are watery, just like dew dripping on the grass. "This description of sweet eyes not only describes the beauty and brightness of the characters' eyes, but also shows the purity of the characters' hearts, which is both popular and unconventional. Another example is the appearance of Mr. Cui: "One head is like a yam egg, and two mouse eyes smile into a crack. "Use a small bumpy yam egg to compare Mr. Cui's head, and use a sneaky mouse eye to compare Mr. Cui's small eyes, vividly showing Mr. Cui's ugly and disgusting appearance. In addition to using appropriate metaphors, the whole poem has successfully adopted the expression of "Xing" in many places, sometimes combining Xing with comparison. The so-called xing is actually a kind of sustenance and association, that is, thinking of another thing from one phenomenon. This is a common technique in China's ancient poetry and folk songs. The application of this technique in long poems is also very successful. For example, "Shandandan bloom is beautiful, and the fragrance grows well", the first sentence of these two poems is Xing, praising Shandandan's beautiful and red flowers, but there is a comparison between Xing and Zhong to inspire people, which not only reminds people of the beauty of Xiangxiang, but also implies that flowers are used to compare the beauty of Xiangxiang. There are many such poems in long poems. Poetry not only uses metaphors to describe people's appearance, but also often uses metaphors to describe people's psychology, events and atmosphere. For example, "the sun shines all over the sky, and the revolution brings good times", which vividly shows the benefits brought to the people by the * * * production party leading the people to engage in revolution. Due to the extensive use of metaphors in long poems, the whole poem is not only more vivid, but also more implicit, which plays a vivid role in conveying feelings and portraying characters.
Another feature of Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang is that they emphasize nationalization and popularization, and their languages are very simple and simple. The words used in long poems are mostly spoken words commonly used in people's lives. In some places, folk proverbs and idioms are properly used and processed on this basis, so that they can be read truly and cordially. For example, there is a poem in the poem that "everyone is worried about the end of a famine year, and everyone is worried about the spring famine in nineteen years." "Winter snow is good for winter wheat, and Wang Gui is like a wheat seedling." "The sheep passed the first sheep, and the * * * production party has already started in northern Shaanxi." Put familiar spoken language and folk proverbs into poems to make long poems more popular and easy to understand and spread.