Kunqu Response

When I first saw Chinese Opera in my life, I was seven. My grandfather is a big fan of Chinese opera and enjoyed watching the opera channel all day long. I was confused at that time: why grandpa loves this so much? The opera is full of the noise of musical instruments and high pitch of sound to me. Even if Chinese Opera is the finest heritage remaining from the history, I never want to get to know it, until I have become an international student. In China, elder people are the most percentage of the audience of Chinese opera; teenagers barely wants to listen or watch. However, once I start watching it and try to get to know it, the splendid costumes, traditional Chinese elements, various of special musical instrument make Chinese opera so unique and attractive. The most significant differences I perceive between kunqu and other performing, is the splendid costumes and makeup which characters wear to represent the features of characters, such as characteristics, social status, age and so on. The makeup is notably different from people wear in other form of performing, such as European musicals. The makeup is full of color and contrasts the characters costumes significantly. From my observation, the characters' faces are usually colored as pale and their eyeshadows are always red. Moreover, the Chinese musical instruments performed as a background music in the play give the harmony and consistency of the whole drama, by applying unique sounds fluently. The mixture of the music instruments and songs that characters perform, brings the audience to the story which the play narratives. Also, when the characters are talking, some short sounds are played by those instruments to express the emotion or feelings of them, such as horror, surprise or happiness. I personally like how characters sing in Kunqu the best. The pitch is high but the sound is incredibly beautiful when it is performed. I am a Chinese native speaker, so I can understand how elegant and delicate the lines are when hearing them, though sometimes the dialect characters are speaking make some understanding difficulties, such as the scene we saw in class from “Mudanting”, I cant get the whole picture. Connected with the beautiful melody, lines are even more attractive; they are like poems which are sang. Kunqu is such an elegant and beautiful form of Chinese opera and I personally like the touching love story of “Mudanting” a lot.