The Origin of Liangshan Lantern Opera

Roughly in the Zheng De period of the Ming Dynasty (1506- 152 1), Liangshan Lantern Festival originated from Liangping's folk lantern class, which combined the dance action of "playing lanterns" with the rap performance of "Yangko Opera" and was called "Liang Shantiao" by outsiders. It comes from the production and life practice of the masses and absorbs the essence of Liangping Han Quyi literature and art.

Liangshan gongs and drums are Liangping's folk percussion music, which has a bright rhythm, strange melody change and quite modern rock momentum. In Old Liangshan, folk gongs and drums competitions are held every year, and the weddings and funerals of ordinary people are publicized with loud gongs and drums. Liangshan gongs and drums eventually evolved into the noisy gongs and drums of Liangshan Lantern Opera.

Liangshan Lantern Opera combines the essence of local Han folk literature, folk songs and dances, folk music, folk art and folk acrobatics, forming magical characteristics. At the same time, it has the elegance of Liangshan farmers' oral literature, the rhythm of folk songs and yangko, the dance of lanterns and car lights, the artistic effect of orchid prints in New Year pictures and the skills of folk juggling.

Liangping produces rice, which was still very popular in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In the rice season, gongs and drums are accompanied by yangko, and folk comedies, characters and stories are performed to entertain themselves. According to experts' research, the lantern string cavity embryo of Liangshan Lantern Opera is the backbone tune of Yangko Opera.

In the past, the "screenwriters" of Liangshan Lantern Opera were all farmers, who wrote and performed trivial things in life, which were quite rural, pastoral, happy and folk anecdotes. The characters in the play are mostly village girls, farmers, woodcutter, attendants, craftsmen, blind fortune tellers, monks, beggars and so on.

Traditional plays are mostly mental, short and pithy, but the structure is loose, which is conducive to arbitrary re-creation in performances. That is, under the premise that the story is not bad, artists can temporarily rhyme on the stage, or even talk to the audience directly, which requires light play, easy lyrics, prominent local spoken language, and rhyme is also very rich in life and sense of humor.

There are about 200 plays of Liangshan Lantern Opera, the most representative of which are eating chaff and cutting hair, seeing off Jingniang, Xiangzi taking his wife and inviting dragons. Most of these plays are adapted from folk operas or folk stories. The Lantern Festival uses dialects, and the lyrics are popular, natural, lively and full of life. In addition, due to strong entertainment, exaggerated plot, prominent contradictions and humorous banter, most of them are comedies and dramas, but there are also tragic dramas. Now there are new plays such as "recruiting a son-in-law" and "selling donkeys".