The legend of the red lantern
The legend of the red lantern (also: The red lantern ; chin .: 红灯记, Hóng dēng jì) was one of the eight model stage works that were allowed to be performed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution . The work, arranged by Zhang Hongxiang and Yue Deshun and premiered in Beijing in 1964, takes the form of a modern Peking opera .
action
The time of the action is 1939, China is occupied by Japanese troops. Railroad worker Li Yuhe ( 李玉 和 ), a communist underground fighter, is reported to deliver encrypted messages to the guerrillas hidden in the mountains, but is betrayed and arrested. Hatoyama, the head of the Japanese military police, tries in vain to extract the code from him. His old mother suspects that she will be the next victim and tells her granddaughter Li Tiemei ( 李铁梅 ), the protagonist of the opera, the story of the family. Like Li Yuhe, Grandmother Li is eventually murdered. However, Tiemei decides to follow her father's example and go to the mountains to complete his mission.
Origin and reception
The opera is a modification of a Shanghai opera of the same name arranged by Zhang Hongxiang and Yue Deshun . This is based on the 1963 feature film Zìyǒu hòulái rén (自有 后来 人; director: Yu Yanfu , chin .: 于 彦 夫). The film is an adaptation of the novel Gémìng zìyǒu hòulái rén (革命 自有 后来 人) by Qian Daoyuan (钱 道 源), published in 1958 , whose starting point is the real experiences of communist underground fighters who met in the train station during the Second Sino-Japanese War von Hulin defended against the Japanese invaders.
The opera was one of six that Mao's wife Jiang Qing declared to be mandatory for revolutionary art. The work makes use of the artistic means of Peking Opera (especially in terms of singing and acting styles), but its plot is set in the present and it shows the fate of ordinary people - an item that was particularly desirable during the Cultural Revolution. In addition to stylized opera singing, the part of Tiemei also includes elements similar to folk songs. Similar to other revolutionary operas, the dialogues are not presented in the traditional recitative style , but rather spoken.
In 1968 Yin Chengzong created a version for piano accompaniment.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peking Opera “The Red Lantern” sung with piano accompaniment. In: Peking Review , No. 30, July 26, 1968; Yin Chenzong