Informative Essay On Peking Opera

If you want to travel in Beijing, I think Peking Opera is a don’t-miss show for you. Different from other operas, like Italian Opera, Peking Opera is a form of traditional Chinese theatre which combines music, vocal performance, mime dance and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. Nowadays, Peking Opera has become the quintessence of Chinese culture. Today I am going to inform you of this great treasure from three aspects: roles, facial makeup and schools.
First of all, Peking Opera is divided into seven roles according to different natural qualities and social qualities of the characters: Sheng, Dan, Jing, Chou, Za, Wu, Liu. However, we are used to generally using Sheng, Dan, Jing, Chou today. In a play of Peking Opera, Sheng is the positive male role, Dan is the positive female role, while Jing is a supporting male role with a striking
In terms of color painting methods, facial makeup is basically divided into three categories: rub faces, face towel, different faces. As time went by, there’re thousands of Plays on the stage of Peking Opera and countless facial makeup, every character owns its own unique facial makeup. The style of their facial makeup depends on the age, social experience and personality of the characters. For example, colors of facial makeup usually describe the nature of characters. A character with a red face is faithful, upright, zealous and lucky, while that with a white face is treacherous and unbelieving. What’s more? Yellow means cruelness and bravery. Gold and silver indicate solemnity……
Eventually, with the development of Peking Opera, four main schools have now been formed due to four famous Peking Opera masters—Lanfang Mei, Yanqiu Chen, Xiaoyun Shang and Huisheng Xun. It is divided by different performing styles of these four great artists.