The Romance of the Peony Fairy

The story of this Cantonese Opera is taken from two famous Chinese works, The Flower in the Mirror and Strange Tales from a Chinese Study, with one of the perennially popular themes in Chinese literature – love between a mortal and an immortal.  As the story goes, the Peony Fairy defies Empress Wu’s wish to bloom out of season.  For this, she is going to suffer punishment of death by the God of Flowers.  She is saved by Huang Wenhan, a scholar who dotes on flowers.  He steals the peony out of the capital and escapes to Luoyang where it thrives again.  But the Heavenly Order cannot be disobeyed, and Peony is still going to die.  At the most critical moment, Huang seeks the help of the Goddess of Mercy, who sprinkles the withered flower with the magic water from the vase she holds in her hand.  Peony comes back to life and becomes the favourite flower for generation after generation of Chinese people. 
　

The operatic genre of Chinese xiqu has a much longer history than the performing art form called ‘opera’ in the West.  Even if one is to count only from its heyday, that is, as zaju in the Yuan Dynasty (13^th – 14^th Century), it still boasts a history of six to seven hundred years.  It can be described as the oldest performing art in the world today, with a genre system and form that no other can match.  Xiqu embraces literature, music, drama, dance, fine art and often, acrobatics and martial art.  Each regional opera is derived from the vernacular, customs and folk music of its place of origin.  The regional characteristics are evident through the delivery of spoken lines and vocal techniques in singing.  On the other hand, in Western opera, the language of performance is often the national language used in countries in Europe. Created as an art form and like all art, it is a reflection of the composer’s style.  It is also written in the language that he uses.  Early Western operas were supported through their patrons, often aristocrats and the court.  In staging, Xiqu also differs greatly from opera.  It has its own formulaic system of performance.  Different character roles have their respective stylized hand movements, eye movements and gait.  There are masks to indicate whether the persona represented is ‘good’ or ‘evil’.  The different ways of looking at ‘death’ also lead to different treatments in ending: in xiqu, there is always a happy ending, while in opera, it always ends with death because it symbolizes transcendence and sublimation of Life.  As for the music, xiqu is built on set tunes, while in opera, each aria and each piece is an original composition in itself.  All these point to the fact that Chinese xiqu and the Western opera are two totally different performing art forms.  That is why, the terms ‘Chinese opera’ and ‘Peking Opera’ (or ‘Beijing Opera’) should be replaced by the transliterated term xiqu, for accuracy’s sake.