歌剧应该是什么模样？——歌剧《八女投江》引发的思考

What Should Operas Be Like? Thoughts Inspired by the Opera The Eight Girls Drowned Themselves in a River

歌剧该是什么样子?这是我观看<八女投江>(孔远编剧,金湘作曲)之后,脑海中萦回不去的问题.

What Should Operas Be Like? What is the'drama'of an opera? Should the multimedia opera The Eight Girls Drowned Themselves in a River be regarded as an opera? Is it really a drama? Is there more form than content in it just as some critics comment? Opera is something imported from abroad.Most of them have a complete theatrical story with characters, theatri-cal conflicts and exciting plot which pushes the story to a climax, or a sudden end or a conclusion. Thus, for the late -coming Chinese opera, it is believed that only the European classic or romantic operas , or only musical drama with a complete story, should be regarded as au- thentic opera. Opera is after all a drama.Any opera should be a dra-ma and should comply with the basic rules of drama. The long-standing traditional Chinese opera is defined by Wang Guowei as a story played with song and dance.Based on this definition, it seems that all tradi- tional operas should be melodrama.But in fact it is not so.As stories are told by means of song and dance per-formance,the way of telling the story is subject to the song and dance in many cases. The playwright and composer of The Eight Girls Drowned Themselves in a River merely wish to tell the story from a different perspective or in a different way. First of all, they transform the narrative pattern into a poetic stage, and then they change the true story into symbolic depiction of the fate of the main characters and their internal experience.In this way , when assisted by multimedia instruments and highlighted by several different singing styles, the heroic images of a few young girls are presented in poetic way in front of the audi-ence.This is an epic, and also a lyrical poem.In this drama, 'the form is the content itself. 'This is an experiment in opera form. Whether it is successful or not, it is open to extensive discussion.But there is one thing cer-tain:'An opera can be like this.'