2 January 2009 (Fri)
Excerpts from the Opera  

The Hanjin Crossing
The story is taken from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Liu Bei's army is being chased by the strong force of Cao Cao of Wei, and in the chaos, his family members are missing. Zhao Yun, a young general, crashes through the battle line on a lone horse and manages to save Lady Gan and Lady Mei, but the latter does not want to encumber him and after giving him her baby son to take back to his father, throws herself into a well and dies. Zhao holds the baby in his arms and returns to Liu's camp safely. At the same time, Zhang Fei makes a successful hoax at Changbanpo to cause the Cao army to retreat. On receiving his baby son from Zhao, Liu throws it on the ground to indicate how anguished he has been about Zhao 's safety. When the Cao army makes another onslaught, help is on the way with Guan Yu's force at Jiangxia, and Liu is finally saved.

Main Cast: Ye Jinyuan

Beating Cheng Ying from The Orphan of the Zhao's
The story takes place during the Spring and Autumn Period. A minister of Jin, is framed by General Tu Angia, and his whole family is killed. Only a half-year-old baby escapes its fate, being saved by a hanger-on called Cheng Ying, who has substituted it with his own baby son. His sacrifice also saves thousands of lives of the babies in the State. Twenty years later, General Wei Jiang, a friend of the Zhao's, returns to the country. On hearing about their fate, he is so enraged by what he thinks Cheng Ying has done that he tricks Cheng to his residence on the pretext of a banquet, and gives him a good beating. Cheng knows that he has found a loyal and good man, so he tells him the truth.

Main Cast: Li Changchun, Zhu Qiang

Flying Tiger Mountain
The story takes place during the Southern Tang period. Legend has it that Li Cunxiao, the foster son of Li Keyong, Lord of Jin, is the incarnation of a celestial star. Originally named An Jingsi, he grows up in a family by the surname of Deng, and is charged with the duty of keeping sheep in the Flying Tiger Mountain. One day, Li Keyong dreams of a ferocious tiger stalking into his tent where he pitches camp. On waking, he asks his attendants to work out the meaning of this, and they congratulate him on soon having a brave general coming to him. Li goes on a hunting expedition with his courtiers. On the way, he is led to the Flying Tiger Knoll where he meets An Jingsi. The boy is only twelve, but when the Lord tests him on his knowledge of weapons, An seems adept in everything and is so strong that he can lift a heavy cauldron. In answering questions posed to him, he is eloquent and never shy, showing a confidence beyond his young age. Li is so happy that he has found this unusual boy and takes him in as one of his heirs to the throne, and gives him a new name as 'Li Cunxiao'.

Main Cast: Li Hongtu, Chen Junjie

Feigning Lunacy from The Cosmic Sword
When the First Emperor of Qin dies, his youngest son succeeds him. He is a tyrant like his father, and licentious in character. He lets the treacherous Prime Minister, Zhao Gao, to mind the state affairs for him. Zhao has a beautiful daughter called Yanrong, who is widowed and returns to her paternal home. The Emperor is so infatuated with her that he wants to make her his queen. But Yanrong loathes him, finding in him an unfit ruler for the country. She refuses to comply, much to her ambitious father's chagrin. When Zhao forces her further, Yanrong takes the advice of her dumb maid and pretends to have lost her sanity. Zhao has to let things be, but the Emperor refuses to take it to be true. He wants Yanrong to appear before him at the imperial palace...

Main Cast: Li Yufu

Retrieving a Lost Seal by a False Fire
Bai Jian is appointed Commissioner of Henan by the Emperor, and he travels incognito in order to find out more about the place. As he leaves his boat to get on shore, he drops his official seal without knowing it. It is picked up by Chou Aichuan who presents it to the Mayor, Jin Xiangrui, as a mirror. Now this Mayor Jin is an alcoholic, who leaves everything to Bai Huai, head of the squad. He shows Bai the seal and asks him to find the man and take him in. Bai Huai goes to the Commissioner's boat to probe, only to be caught. When he comes face to face with the Commissioner, the two find out they are long-lost father-and-son. After celebrating their reunion, the father scolds the son for being careless with the official seal. So he comes up with a scheme: when Jin the Mayor pays his official visit, the father would set up a false fire at the back of the boat. Pretending that he needs to supervise putting out the fire, Jian should ask Jin to take custody of the seal and give him an empty box. When Jin opens it and finds nothing inside, he is totally shocked and at a loss as to what to do. He asks Huai for advice, so Huai suggests that he put the seal he found into that box. In this way, Jian retrieves his lost seal. He is so grateful to his father that he asks him to come and live with him.

Main Cast: Zhang Xuejin, Huang Dehua

3 January 2009 (Sat)
The Lady General Mu Guiying Leads Her Army to War
This is one of the excerpts from the famous saga of the Yang family. When she hears that the enemies are invading the land of Song, Dowager She, head of the Yang family, sends her great-grand children, Yang Wenguang and Yang Jinhua, to go to Bianling to weigh out the political situation. The Secretary of Military Affairs, Wang Qiang recommends his own son, Wang Lun, to be the marshal as a step towards seizing military control. On the other hand, Kou Jun recommends the generals from the Yang family. A contesting ground is set up to find out who has better martial art skills, and the best man would win the marshalling seal. Wang Lun wins the first few rounds and is going to become commander when Yang Wenguang and Yang Jinhua appear. Wang loses and dies. The Emperor knows that they come from the Yang family, so he orders to give them the seal to take home, in order to invite Wenguang's mother, Mu Guiying, to be the commander. But Mu finds the Emperor heartless and despicable. She is reluctant about putting down the family members' lives for a man like this. She chastises Wenguang for contesting to get the seal. The Dowager steps in and reminds her that the country is in danger. Mu finally agrees to put on her armour and lead the Yang army into battle.

Main Cast: Shang Wei, Li Yufu, Dong Yuanyuan ─ performing the role of Mu Guiying,
                  Li Mingyan, Li Hongtu, Zhu Qiang, Li Changchun

4 January 2008 (Sun)
Excerpts from the Opera  

Fushan
Two bandits, Yu the Sixth and Yu the Seventh, have been wreaking havoc in the Fushan area, and many of the locals have been inveigled into joining them. The Central Government sends an expedition to get rid of them, headed by Shi Gong. But Fushan is a perfect geographical hideout for the gang, and not knowing the roads on the mountain, the army cannot go in. The commander, Huang Tianba, decides to hold a meeting on how to scout the mountain, but two men, He Tianbao and Lu Zhiyi, have already set off by themselves. Up there on the mountain and in the darkness of the night, Lu soon get s killed. Although He valiantly fights on, he is shot by a swinging hook and dies. Back in the camp, Huang wakes up from a nightmare and soon learns of the plight of the two when Guan Ning brings the devastating news. Guan also sets off to scout the mountain without order, but he has better luck this time and returns unscathed. With the information, Huang and his generals can go to see Shi Gong to discuss the way to crack the bandit force on Fushan.

Main Cast: Ye Jinyuan

Lian Jinfeng
Lian Jinfeng is a daughter of great filial piety. When her mother gets ill and expresses her wish to eat sea cucumbers, she learns deep water diving in order to pick the sea cucumbers to restore her mother to health.

Main Cast: Sheng Wei

Beating the Dragon Robe
As it is the Fifteenth Day of the New Year and traditionally the Lantern Festival, Judge Bao arranges a lantern fair and invites Emperor Renzong to attend. There is a performance about the story of the heartless and ungrateful Zhang Jibao, who is struck by lightning as a divine retribution for causing his foster parents to die. The Emperor is outraged by this spoilsport piece on the supposedly auspicious occasion, and wants Bao to be beheaded. The Prime Minister begs to spare Bao on his behalf. He also asks Chen Lin, an old eunuch, to tell the Emperor how his life was saved as a baby when a vicious plot was made against his mother, Lady Li, now a blind beggar in the street. The Emperor realizes that the lantern scene is a lesson from Bao. He immediately pardons him, have the culprit Guo Huai executed, and sends for an entourage to take his mother back to the palace. On being reinstated, Lady Li, now the Empress Dowager, orders Judge Bao to punish her son on her behalf. But there has been no precedent in history of a minister inflicting corporeal punishment on his imperial master, so Bao requests the Emperor to give him the dragon robe he is wearing to receive the beating in his place.

Main Cast: Li Mingyan

Crossing the Ravine from The Lady Generals of the Yang Family
This is another story from the saga of the Yang family of valiant generals. During Emperor Renzong's reign, the King of Xixia invades Song land. After making their way into the valley where the enemy pitches camp, Mu Guiying and her son try to find the secret mountain path that would lead them to the other side of the mountain for a surprise attack on the enemy's camp. After overcoming many obstacles, they finally find it with the help of an old horse and an old man who looks for herbs in the mountains. They cross the ravine and finally defeat the enemy.

Main Cast: Dong Yuanyuan, Han Shengcun

The Emperor Gives Audience
The story takes place during the Tang Dynasty. Xue Pinggui, who is actually a prince of Tang by birth, has suffered many hardships because his father-in-law, the Prime Minister Wang Yun, is a vicious snob who wants to get rid of him. Xue is tricked and sent to the enemy camp of Xiliang. There the King of Xiliang takes to him so much that he makes Xue his son-in-law and husband of Princess Daizhan. Eighteen years later, Xue returns to his native land and has many bones to pick. He first seeks an audience with the Tang emperor, from whom he obtains the absolute power of giving out death sentences for any cause he thinks justified. He goes to his new palace and gives audience. He first summonses his father-in-law, Wang Yun. Xue accuses him of being such a heartless snob and brought such misery to his wife and Wang's own daughter. He is going to sentence him to death when his wife, Wang Baochuan, arrives and saves her father's neck. But Xue is not to be pacified, so instead of treating him with the respect due of a son-in-law, he sends Wang to sit at a corner of the palace. Then he sends for Wei Hu, who has framed him and sent him to the enemy by getting him drunk, and when Xue returns to Song land, has tried to kill him. This time, Baochuan chimes in by enumerating Wei's crimes. In the end, Wei is beheaded. Princess Daizhan arrives, and the two women cordially accept each other as first and second wives of Xue. Since his mother-in-law has been sympathetic to Baochuan in her dire straits for the last eighteen years when he was away from home, Xue invites her to the imperial palace, where he formally thanks her by kowtowing to her.

Main Cast: Zhang Xuejin, Li Yufu

Zhang Xuejin
Zhang Xuejin is a National Class One Performer and a winner of the Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Theatre. Born into a family of Chinese opera performers, he is the son of Zhang Junqiu, a famous name in Peking Opera. He was first trained in xiaosheng (young civil male) roles, then changed to laosheng (old male) roles under Wang Shaolou and Chen Shaowu in the Yu (Shuyan) stylistic school. In 1962, he became a disciple of Ma Lianliang, the famous virtuosi in Peking Opera. Zhang has a rich voice and a broad range, and sings with clear diction and powerful conviction. He has won many awards in China's national competitions and showcases of Peking Opera, and was presented with the Gold Award for The Most Outstanding Artist in Asia by the American-Chinese Arts Association, Lincoln Center and the Cultural Bureau of New York.

Li Yufu
Li Yufu is a National Class One Performer and a disciple of Mei Lanfang, having benefited from the Maestro's personal coaching in the art form. She was among the first batch of graduates of the Beijing Chinese Opera School, and later became a star of the Mei Lanfang Peking Opera Troupe. On stage, she performs with a subtle constraint that suggests demure grace and uprightness of character, and has a flexible voice that allows her to command a wide repertoire of roles. Li has given many overseas performing tours, having visited Moscow, Greece, Japan, Myanmar, France, Brazil etc. Upon retiring from the stage, she has been teaching at the Beijing Vocational Institute of Local Opera and Arts, the postgraduate programme of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts and the GuoGuang Opera Company of Taiwan. Her biography, Li Yufu – An Exponent of the Mei Lanfang School, was published in 2007.

Li Changchun
Li Changchun is a virtuoso artist of the Qiu (Shengrong) stylistic school, specializing in hualian (painted face) roles. He is a supervisor on the postgraduate programme of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. He became a formal disciple of Qiu Shengrong, a Peking Opera artist famous for his hualian roles, in 1961, and since then has won many awards. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to the promotion and development of the Qiu legacy by training talents in Peking Opera.

Li Mingyan
Li Mingyan is a National Class One Performer and supervisor on the postgraduate programme of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. She received her first training from her father, Li Lianjia, and later enrolled in the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts where she was trained by many virtuosi of the art form. In 1958, she became a formal disciple of Li Duokui. With a broad-ranged voice and brilliant timbre, she is a fine exponent of Li stylistic school of interpreting laodan (old female) roles with her fulsome vocalisation. She has been dedicated to grooming young talents in Peking Opera in recent years, and currently teaches in many company groups and a cadem ies.

Ye Jinyuan
Ye Jinyuan is a National Class One Performer and a winner of the Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Theatre and the Gold Award of the Mei Lanfang Awards in Chinese Peking Opera. Ye was born into a family of Chinese opera artists, his grandfather being Ye Chunshan, founder of the number one operatic troupe in Beijing in the early 20th Century, the Fuliancheng Troupe. His father, Ye Shengchang, and uncles, Ye Shengzhang and Ye Shenglan, were all famous artists in Peking Opera. He was initiated into the art form at the age of eight and became a disciple of Wang Jinlu in 1979. He has performed with many virtuosi in the genre, including Zhang Junqiu, Qiu Shengrong, Zhao Yanxia, Wang Jinlu, Tan Yuanshou, and has performed and given lectures overseas.

Huang Dehua
Huang Dehua is a National Class One Performer and a Visiting Professor for the Tertiary Section of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. He was trained in chou (comic) roles, first under Luo Wenkui, then became a formal disciple of Sun Shengwu in 1962, and later was coached by Xiao Shengxuan. From Xiao, he acquired the stylistic qualities of being able to strike a balance between the elegant and the comical, without ever falling into the vulgar and the cliched, and sings and delivers his lines with clear intonation and a crisp diction. He often shares the stage with such famous virtuosi and Mei Baojiu, Zhang Xuejin, and is a partner with Tan Yuanshou, Ye Shaolan, Jing Rongqing, Shang Changrong etc. He boasts a wide repertoire, amongst which Dotting the Dragon's Eye won the first Wenhua Grand Prize presented by the Ministry of Culture of China.

Li Hongtu
Li Hongtu is a National Class One Performer, a winner of the Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Theatre, and currently the Executive Company Director of the Mei Lanfang Company of the Peking Opera Theatre of Beijing. He became a disciple of the famous Peking Opera virtuoso, Ye Shaolan, in 1993, and was trained in xiaosheng (young civil male) roles. With his handsome persona and flair, he is regarded as a fine exponent of the Ye (Shenglan) stylistic school. He is a winner in many national competitions, and has given many touring performances overseas.

Dong Yuanyuan
Dong Yuanyuan is a National Class One Performer and winner of the Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Theatre. She has benefited from the tutelage of many virtuosi, including the famous Peking Opera artist, Mei Baojiu, of whom she became a disciple in 1995. With a wide-ranging repertoire that covers both civil and military roles, which she performs with insightful sensitivity, she is considered a fine third generation exponent of the Mei (Lanfang) stylistic school. She won a Gold Award and an Outstanding Performance Award at the 3rd China Peking Opera Festival, and the White Magnolia Award in Shanghai.

Zhu Qiang
Zhu Qiang is a National Class One Performer and a famous exponent of the Ma (Lianliang) stylistic school in laosheng (old male) roles. He was among the first batch of students on the Postgraduate Programme for Outstanding Young Performers in Chinese Peking Opera, and has benefited from the teaching of many virtuosi in the Ma school, including the personal coaching of the famous Peking Opera artist, Zhang Xuejin. He won an Outstanding Performance Award at the National New Repertory Showcase for Peking Opera and a Class One Award at the National Accreditation Showcase for Young Performers of the Ministry of Culture.

Chen Junjie
Chen Junjie is a National Class One Performer specialized in the Qiu (Shengrong) stylistic school of hualian (painted face) roles. He was among the first batch of students on the Postgraduate Programme for Outstanding Young Performers in Chinese Peking Opera, and has benefited from the teaching of Wen Tao, Li Changchun, Xia Yunlong, Meng Junquan et al. He has a command of solid training and a sonorous voice. His repertoires include Qin Xianglian, the Judge Bao series of Finding the Empress Dowager and Beating the Dragon Robe, Chisang Town, The Hunchback Prime Minister etc..  

Huang Yanzhong
Huang Yanzhong is a National Class One Performer specialized in hualian (painted face) roles. He was the winner of an Outstanding Performance Award at the All China New Repertory Showcase for Youth Troupes and a nomination for the Mei Lanfang Gold Awards Competition. He has given overseas performances in Korea, the UK, Italy, Germany, Japan and the US, winning critical acclaim.

Shang Wei
Shang Wei is a National Class One Performer specialized in qingyi (virtuous female) roles of the Mei (Lanfang) stylistic school. In 1996, she became a disciple of Mei Baojiu, the famous Peking Opera artist. She was among the third batch of students of the Postgraduate Programme for Outstanding Young Peking Opera Performers, and winner of the Outstanding Performance Award (Individual) at the 3rd China Peking Opera Festival in 2001, with her excellent performance in the modern Peking Opera, The Grassland, My Mother.

Huang Baixue
Huang Baixue is a National Class One Performer specialised in wen chou (civil comic) roles. He was trained at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts where his teachers included Xiao Shengxuan and Wang Ronghan, and was the winner of a Performance Award at the New Repertory Showcase of Beijing

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