Revolutionary opera

'' Precursors of revolutionary opera existed during the Republican era, when Nationalist officials and rural reformers such as the Mass Education Movement pushed for various opera reform initiatives that sought to use theatre performances to inculcate their desired objectives of abolishing certain traditional customs and strengthening national identity. Nationalist officials also coerced local village leaders to replace religious festivals with reform opera through police involvement. The Communists only began to use opera as a method of mass mobilization in the late 1940s when they began land reform programs in areas under their control. Jiang Qing was the chief advocate and engineer of the transformation from traditional operas to revolutionary ones, and chose the Peking opera as her "laboratory experimentation" for accomplishing this radical change in theater art. The traditional Peking opera was revolutionized in both form and content. Eight model plays were produced in the first three years of the Cultural Revolution. They consisted of five modern operas (The Legend of the Red Lantern, Shajiabang, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Raid on the White Tiger Regiment, and On the Docks), two ballets (Red Detachment of Women and The White-Haired Girl), and one symphony (also Shajiabang, which is more precisely a cantata). The official versions of the operas were all Peking operas and were produced by either the China Peking Opera House or the Shanghai Peking Opera House, although many of them were subsequently adapted to local provincial types of operas. The ballets were produced by either the National Ballet of China or the Shanghai Ballet Company. Shajiabang was musically expanded to a symphony with a full Western orchestra, a format similar to the ninth symphony of Beethoven, with an overture and 8 movements. The Legend of the Red Lantern was also adapted to a piano-accompanied cantata by the pianist Yin Chengzong, which was basically a cycle of arias excerpted from the opera. After 1969 several other model operas were produced, including Azalea Mountain, Battle in the Plains, and Bay of Panshi, following the original model in content and form. However it was the original eight plays that were most commonly performed. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, the ballet Red Detachment of Women was adapted to a Peking opera, while the Peking opera The Azalea Mountain was adapted to a ballet. These did not have a chance to become as popular as their earlier versions, and the ballet version of The Azalea Mountain was never officially released. ==National implementation==

Model operas were performed on stages, broadcast on the radio, made into films, and sung by millions. They were the only form of mass theatrical entertainment in China at the time. Unlike European opera, which was essentially entertainment for the elite, revolutionary opera had become a popular political art. Many ordinary Chinese citizens were familiar with the arias in these model operas and would sing them at home or on the streets. Mobile film units brought cinematic recordings of the operas into the countryside and played an important role in popularizing and standardizing the art form. The revolutionary operas were regarded as some of the newborn socialist things () arising during the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, one way China promoted its policy of state feminism was through revolutionary opera. Thus they both provided a standard of conduct for officials and expressed a standard for ordinary people to hold them to. Author Huo Wang, a citizen in China at the time, wrote in 1998 in reference to the Cultural Revolution era: "Model operas are the only art form left in the whole of China. You cannot escape from listening to them. You hear them every time you turn on the radio. You hear them from loudspeakers every time you go outside". The promotion of through official channels also surged in 1974 in connection with the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign. Foreign exchanges The were a staple of cultural exchanges in the years leading to China-United States rapprochement. American tourist groups in China during the early 1970s typically included at least one of The White Haired Girl or the Red Detachment of Women in their itineraries. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger viewed The Red Detachment of Women. ==List of revolutionary model plays==

The eight model plays • The Legend of the Red Lantern (), Peking opera • Shajiabang (沙家浜, formerly romanised as Shachiapang), Peking opera • Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (), Peking opera • Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (), Peking opera • On the Docks (海港, also known as The Harbor), Peking opera • Red Detachment of Women (), ballet • The White Haired Girl (), ballet • Shajiabang the symphony Later model plays • The Azalea Mountain (), Peking opera • Song of the Dragon River (), Peking opera • The Warfare on the Plain (), Peking opera • Panshiwan (), Peking opera • Red Detachment of Women the Peking opera • Interrogating the Chair (), Peking opera • Ode to the Yimeng Mountains (), ballet • The Brother and Sister on the Prairie (), ballet ==After the Cultural Revolution==

Although these works bear unmistakable political overtones of the time when they were created, they nonetheless had significant artistic values, and for this reason, some of the works remain popular decades after the Cultural Revolution. As academic Kazushi Minami observes, many people, especially rural people, cherished the yangbanxi and still do today. The three most popular Peking operas are The Legend of the Red Lantern, Shajiabang, and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. And the ballet that still shows a considerable vitality today is Red Detachment of Women, the one that was presented to Richard Nixon, President of the United States, who visited China in 1972, seven years before the normalization of the Sino-US relationship. This performance was reenacted in a slightly surreal form in John Adams's opera Nixon in China (1985–87). The eight model plays were the subject of the 2005 documentary film Yangbanxi, The Eight Model Works. The film Farewell My Concubine (1993), set in a Peking Opera company, shows the tension and debates within the group when the revolutionary opera replaced the old. ==See also==