Home Shanghai trip story: the history of the Shanghai Opera
Shanghai trip story: the history of the Shanghai Opera
Shanghai Opera or Huju is a piece of authentic Shanghai folk culture which many tourists are very interested in during their Shanghai trip. It originated in the folk ballads of the countryside around the Huangpu River and entered its prime during Shanghai’s former heyday in the 1930s and 19740s.
Unique characteristic of Shanghai Opera is that it tells contemporary stories. It is the only one of the more than 300 folk opera forms in China whose major repertoire consists of contemporary stories. This aspect is closely related to the history of the art form.
Shanghai Opera with its roots in the folklore of the Huangpu River region, developed into a two-person show, with singers playing their own musical instruments. Then gradually the musical accompaniment and singing separated and it became an opera form. From its very beginning, the operas told contemporary stories.
The oldest plays of Shanghai Opera tell stories of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). This made it impossible for Shanghai Opera to adopt the highly dramatic costumes and make-up used in Peking Opera, which tells stories and legends from hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
Some classics of Shanghai Opera are still performed nowadays. One tells of the harm of gambling with the tale of a gambler who loses all his property and even his wife. Another tells the story of an old man deserted by his unfilial daughters and which has some similarity to Shakespeare’s “King Lear”.
Shanghai Opera became an established art form in the 1930s, landing on the stages of the Great World and other theaters. It absorbed many elements from movies and drama in stage design, lighting and dramatic expression. Lots of contemporary authors’ works were adapted to Shanghai Opera plays.
It was also in the early 1940s that the name “Shang hai” started to be used. Before then, it had come to be called Shen Qu (Shanghai Ballad). Also in this period, “Shang hai” gained a reputation for its novel costume, and was called, “Opera with Western suit and Cheongsam”.
After liberation in 1949, the Chinese government paid a lot of attention to Shanghai. New plays were written and staged, telling of the revolutionary work of Communists.
In the 1980s, a TV series of Shanghai Opera was produced, which told the life story of a movie star of old Shanghai, Zhou Xuan. Mao Shanyu, who played the role of the heroine in the play became known to every family.
