International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2020

 

A preliminary analysis of the genre of the opera in the Southern Song Dynasty

(Abstract)

 

XU, Hongtu

 

The Southern Opera (nan xi) came into existence at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, and is the first Chinese traditional opera that became full-fledged. It combines singing, dancing, narration, model role and music together to perform complete long stories, make Chinese traditional opera a kind of comprehensive art, and has epoch-making significance in the history of Chinese opera. In its early days, it was inevitably rough, loose and immature, so attracted little attention from intellectuals. By the time Number One Scholar Zhang Xie came out, however, it was no longer the case. Instead, it became rather matured in all dimensions, and formed its own unique specifications of scripts and genre. The article describes it in terms of specifications of scripts, role system, music rhythms, episode divisions and opening.