Jiang Jie is a filmed adaptation of the Chinese revolutionary
opera Jiang Jie. This partly sung, partly spoken opera,
composed in 1964, represents a then new form of opera,
based on a synthesis of Bejing opera and Western musical
elements, that became the standard during the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
Beijing opera (jingju), just one of China’s hundreds of
regional opera styles, is a comprehensive art, a synthesis
of song, speech, acrobatics, dance, and instrumental performance.
Performers in easily identifiable costume and
character types perform highly stylized action while singing
arias derived from a fixed palette of tunes and formulae. A
small orchestra accompanies them, comprised of percussion
(drum, clappers, gong, and cymbals), and strings,
both plucked (yueqin) and bowed (jinghu, erhu).
Chinese historians date the emergence of Beijing opera to
the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), more precisely to the
Qianlong Emperor’s 80th birthday celebration in 1790.
Several opera troupes from Anhui province performed
there, and their musical styles came to be combined into
what became Beijing opera. Starting from populist provincial
origins, the form eventually came to be accepted in the
imperial court, where the Empress Dowager Cixi’s enthusiastic
support institutionalized elite patronage. During the
“golden age” of Beijing opera, China’s early republican
period, from about 1910 to 1937, the form enjoyed great
creativity and popularity. The reigning “pop stars” of the
era were Beijing opera’s four great dans, or male performers
of young female roles: Mei Lanfang, Cheng Yanqiu,
Xun Huisheng, and Shang Xiaoyan, each of whom created
a style of performance that continues to this day.
The early 20th century saw the addition of modern socially-
conscious stories in contemporary dress to the traditional
repertoire of mythological fables and historical tales.
These progressive social activist operas anticipated the
changes that the communist revolution (1949) imposed on
Beijing opera.
Traditional operas flourished after the revolution until
1963. In 1964, they virtually disappeared, to be replaced
by the “eight model operas” (yangbanxi) that became
famous (or notorious, depending on your political and
aesthetic point of view) during the Cultural Revolution.
Following a complaint from Chairman Mao that China’s
stage was dominated by “emperors, kings, generals, chancellors,
literati and beauties”, the traditional operas were
banned, replaced by a new opera designed to create proletarian
heroic models who would “serve the (proletarian)
masses.” This theory led to the reduction of the repertoire
to the “eight model operas” that would monopolise staged
and broadcast musical performance for the next twelve
years. Scholars disagree, and in fact list anywhere from
eight to fifteen model operas. These were selected, developed,
revised, and promoted by Jiang Qing, Mao’s powerful
wife and China’s cultural commissar during this period.
Her patronage, recalling Cixi’s, marks the second time that
a powerful woman leader in China decisively intervened in
the country’s operatic history.
Under Jiang Qing’s rigorous control (one is reminded of
the monopoly on operatic performance granted in the 17th
century by Louis XIV of France to Jean-Baptiste Lully, his
court composer, in an equally ideologically regulated
moment of performing arts history), these model operas
and excerpts from them (along with two model ballets and
a model symphony), were the only pieces of music that could be performed in China. The most famous exemples
include The Legend of the Red Lantern (Hong deng ji),
Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (Zhiqu weihushan), and
Shajiabang.
Two types of stories were permitted in model opera, both
intended to promote models for continuing ideological education
and inspiration: uplifting tales of heroic Chinese
communists fighting for the revolution, and uplifting tales of
similar heroes resting the Japanese invaders. Actors wore
modern dress; staging became more realistic (but had its
own ritualised elements). The music underwent fascinating,
complex changes, combining a basis in traditional Beijing
opera with many innovations imported from contemporary
and Western Romantic musical practice: a more modern
singing style, notable in the vocal ranges; elements of
Western chromaticism and harmony (particularly in the
instrumental preludes and interludes); the introduction of
Western instruments (brass, bowed strings).
Despite, or perhaps because of these model operas’ complete
monopolisation of the PRC’s musical space, they
became immensely popular. Audiences (anyone in China
exposed to radio, television, theatre, or cinema) learned
the arias by heart: many Chinese citizens in their 40s, 50s,
and 60s can still sing them today.
Jiang Jie, in form, style, and content, is a revolutionary
opera in the Jiang Qing-approved style. But for complex
political reasons it never “made it” onto the officially
approved list of “model operas”.
Its story of a young Communist secret operative sacrificing
herself, on the eve of the declaration of the People’s
Republic, to save the lives of her fellow revolutionaries, is
exemplary. The music is among the most beautiful that the
model opera form has to offer. The character of Jiang Jie
has several exquisite, show-stopping arias. But rather than
rely on stagy vocal pyrotechnics and histrionic declamation,
her music insinuates a remarkably soft, subtly inflected,
gorgeously lyrical sensibility into a rather officially circumscribed
set of forms. Subtle western instrumental touches
inflect, at particularly moving moments in the narrative,
the pentatonic character of the music (note the Kurt
Weill-like effusion of brass that briefly erupts, to just as
quickly subside). The secondary characters get well-characterized
musical styles of their own, including the rustic
straightforwardness of the peasant activists, and the
campy grotesque of the bad guy cops.
Based on the extremely popular novel Red Rock (eight million
copies sold!), Jiang Jie ‘s creation in 1967 was closely
supervised by Jiang Qing. To prepare, the singers even
visited the opera’s original setting, the former KMT prison
in Chongqing, to immerse themselves in the authentic
atmosphere of the story. But something went wrong: before
its premiere, the opera suddenly disappeared. An article
by Mao’s secretary criticised it for being overly ideological,
with “no story, no drama, just pure concepts”. But
this may have just been a front for the real objections to
the work, involving the Cultural Revolution’s typically poisonous
intra-party intrigue, in which the real Jiang Jie became
tied to with the faction behind Deng Xiaoping (later to
be China’s leader, but in 1967 the ultimate bête noire of
the country’s radical leaders). Eventually, though, the opera’s
reputation was rehabilitated. It is now often associated
with the obligatory Chairman Mao bon mot, who was said,
on seeing the opera, to have “sighed with much emotion
and regret to his staff: ‘Why can’t we bring Jiang Jie back to
life? Why didn’t we send in our troops to save her?’”.
Fashions change: the end of the Cultural Revolution was
quickly followed by a resurgence of traditional opera, including
Beijing opera, in the Eighties. But, as state support
was withdrawn, and as a much more liberal popular mediascape
provided rich alternatives, audiences dwindled.
Cultural tastes change, too. Once derided among musicologists
and cultural historians as mere propaganda, and, at
worst, kitsch art, the Cultural Revolution’s music, painting,
and theatre have recently been subject to a bracing and
entirely welcome critical reevaluation. It is now possible to
approach works like Jiang Jie on their own terms. Listen
with open ears and you can detect something quite extraordinary
going on: an aesthetically supercharged, intensely
overdetermined clash of idealism and ideology, beauty
and formalism, art and politics, freedom and repression.
So much is at stake in these works: they’re a window into
a still painfully unresolved period of Chinese history, and a
mirror of the most crucial dilemmas still facing our own
worlds.
Shelly Kraicer