Theater

• Peking Opera - a stylized chinese form opera dating from the late 18th century, in which speech, singing, mime, and acrobatics are performed to an instrumental accompanient.
• It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century.
• regarded as one of the cultural treasures of china and was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty Court
• two main style of music - His-p'l ( lower ) and Erh-huang ( higher )
• They utilize the technique called fan-pan which is commonly used for sorrowful songs, and is only sung by bearded character.
• The orchestra of the peking opera is different from the western orchestra.
• It comprises about eight musicians sitting on stools in the far-corner of the stage.
• Each performance of the peking opera begins with the ta-lo and siag-lo, a small and large gong and cymbals
• In some performances they also start with a single skin drum or kettle drum.
• The conductor usually sits in the center of the orchestra and creates tempo with this drum
• theater musicians learn their parts by rote since chinese musical notation is very imprecise