A Brief History of Color Tune Opera

The form of the play is lively, easy to understand, the content is close to people's lives, and it has strong national style and local characteristics. Known as "a happy drama full of earthy fragrance", it was selected into the national intangible cultural heritage list. 1955 was named "Tone Drama".

Tone was originally called tone. It is one of the most popular operas in Guangxi. It belongs to the lantern opera system, originated from the rural songs and dances and rap in Guilin, and is widely distributed. There are about 500 kinds of color-coded dramas, namely, one-man show, rival show, big flirt, three minor shows, leading show and rival show. Colored dramas are popular in Guilin, Liuzhou, Hechi and Baise. Due to dialect differences, there are different names in different places: Guilin is called "Lantern", "Colored Tone" and "Singing Lantern"; Pingle, Lipu, Liuzhou and Hechi are called "tea picking dramas" and "flirting"; Baise and Nanning are called "big tea-picking operas", "harmony operas" and "harmony operas" ... but "flirting" and "tea-picking operas" are the most common. 1955 was named "color flirting" when he participated in the Beijing mass music and dance performance. Common ones are "Bird Shooting" and "Sister Liu".

Guangxi is a multi-ethnic region with rich and colorful folk music and dances. Color tone was originally a "sub-tone" evolved from folk songs and dances and rap. It consists of a pair of men and women singing and dancing. The man dances with a flower fan and the woman waves a square towel, showing the joy of love. The content of singing is mostly to praise nature or love, and the tunes used are folk songs, folk songs and minor tunes.

During the reign of Daoguang and Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, the tune spread from north to south, forming a main distribution area centered on Guilin, Liuzhou and Yishan, and continued to spread to the south. Under the influence of Hunan ancient painting drama, Jiangxi tea-picking drama and Guangxi opera, flirting has gradually developed from the "two plays" of clown and Xiao Dan to the "three plays" of Xiao Sheng, clown and Xiao Dan with characters (the so-called "Jianghu 36 Tunes"). In the rural areas of northern Guangxi, "seven tight, eight loose and nine happy" appeared, that is, a "mountain-crossing class" composed of seven, eight or nine people, which required artists to be versatile and easy to wander between villages. Through their long-term performances in rural areas, festivals and temple fairs, they have accumulated 36 "three plays" such as "double visits", "double shops", "fortune telling for the blind", "Wang San kills birds" and "three visits to parents", which are called "Jianghu tunes" locally. Modal music in this period initially formed three categories with their own characteristics, namely, tune, board and tune, which has been called "nine tones and eighteen tones", and at the same time, it has also been reformed in makeup, performance and business. In the thirty-second year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1906), the most famous grass head broke the old habit of "women don't sing tunes" for Xu Diaoban, and the first batch of female roles appeared in color-coded dramas.

Before and after the Revolution of 1911, the multicolored tune entered the town stage from the rural building, and the "mountain-crossing class" developed into a semi-professional tune-up class for twenty or thirty people, including Le Tong Hall, Cuile Hall and Group Amusement Park. At this time, the original 36 "Jianghu Tunes" could not meet the audience's requirements, so artists compiled and performed "major" dramas such as "Two Women Fighting for Husband", "Catch grinding bean curd", "Broken Spoon" and "Bad Daughter-in-law Becoming a Cow" based on novels and folk stories. At the same time, in order to make a living, artists have also created many "anti-Taiwan dramas", such as Class A's performance of "Mom Sending Girls", Class B's performance of "Girls Sending Girls", Class B's performance of "Three Visits to Family" and Class A's editing of "Four Girls Dating". The results of this competition against Taiwan not only enriched the repertoire of timbre, but also promoted the development of timbre music and performing arts. Before and after the Revolution of 1911, famous artists came forth in large numbers. For example, there are "four champions" in Guilin: Leng Guifu, Zhu, Luo and Qin Laosi; There are "four famous poets" around the mountain: Wu Laonian, Pan, Liang Rushan and "Barber"; Ning Ming has Zhou Chaogang, the "king of grimaces"; Rong 'an and Sanjiang have "adjustable kings" such as Uncle Li and Chen Songshan.

After 1927, the artists were devastated and the color tone was on the verge of decline.

After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), Caidiao was reborn, and professional troupes such as osmanthus troupe and Liuzhou peasant troupe were established one after another. Amateur troupes also spread all over urban and rural areas.

1in the spring of 955, Guangxi Literature and Art Cadre School opened a color tone training class, which trained a number of outstanding young actors, such as Fu Jinhua, Tang Ji, Wang Yuzhen, Luo Liang and Yang Aimin.

1956, Guangxi Melody Troupe was established.

1959, Liuzhou Color Tone Drama Troupe directed and performed the color tone drama "Liu Sanjie", which was warmly welcomed by audiences inside and outside the region and contributed to the improvement of color tone art.

1965, Guangxi Color Melody Troupe directed and performed the modern play Three Little Red Flowers, which was made into a color film by Beijing Film Studio.