Popular Taiwanese opera singers Lee Ru-lin, left, Yang Li-hua, center, and Huang Xiang-lian.
PHOTOS: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
Published on Taipei Times
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/12/02/2003282677
Taiwanese opera is celebrated
Ming Hwa Yuan is also involved in the three-month long 2005 Taiwanese Opera Festival in Ilan County
By Derek Lee
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 02, 2005, Page 13
Popular Taiwanese opera singers Lee Ru-lin, left, Yang Li-hua, center, and Huang Xiang-lian.
PHOTOS: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
For the first time in Taiwan's history, a nearly three-month-long festival devoted to the art of Taiwanese opera has been launched, last month at the National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心), in Ilan County (宜蘭縣).
Sponsored by Uni-President Yi-Lan Art and Culture Corp (統一蘭陽藝文公司) and Ming Hwa Yuan, the 2005 Taiwaneese Opera Festival has invited more than 20 professional Taiwanese Opera troupes, with casts of over 500, to perform every week until Jan. 22 in this 24-acre culture park, which first opened its doors in 2003.
The main purpose of the festival is to present the history of Taiwanese opera since its inception in Ilan in the early 1900s.
Opera started out as a means of outdoor entertainment for Taiwanese farmers and villagers and a way to worship gods on their birthdays. During the 1920s, the Japanese colonial government imposed strict restrictions on opera performances and forced the troupes to sing and act inside theater houses, so the the public could be controlled better.
Opera costumes usually worn by royal princes.
Some of the well-known troupes were invited to perform in southern Fujianese cities, where people spoke the same Min-dialect.
From 1949 to 1956, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) took over control of Taiwan the number of registered Taiwanese Opera troupes was more than 500.
As radios, records and film impacted unfavorably on the opera business, the troupes learned to adapt and record their performances.
In the 1960s, however, the opera business was at a low and the number of opera troupes was reduced to about 100. This lasted until the 1970s when TV stations started to organize their own troupes and stage broadcasts of Taiwanese opera.
Many big-name stars such as Liao Qiong-zhi (廖瓊枝), Yang Li-hua (楊麗花), Ye Qing (葉青), Liu Qing (柳青), Huang Xiang-lian (黃香蓮), Chen Mei-yun (陳美雲) and so on became big TV Taiwanese opera stars.
As to the content, there have also been changes. Previously, the stories were based on historical and folk legends. Nowadays, opera tries to address modern issues, such as national identity, judicial problems and bilateral relations between Taiwan and China.
Modern-content operas such as Taiwan, My Mother (2000) (台灣我的母親), A Case of a Court Judge (1991, 曲判記), Flower on the Other Side of the Bank (2001, 彼岸花), seem to have caught a new wave of popularity and have created another golden era for Taiwanese opera.
資料來源:http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/12/02/2003282677/print
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