NYJPW Board members, John, Penny, Jon and Jennifer Wang, have a pleasure to visit one of the most famous places, the Summer Palace and the Great Stage, at Beijing. In Chinese history, the Summer Palace (Yi Ho Yuan) is a well known palace that has been built especially for the royal family in Qing Dynasty. It became fully utilized by Empress Dowager with the promotion of Chinese Peking Opera. The Great Stage (Da Xi Lou) was built specifically for the Chinese Opera performance.
The Story of the Great Stage - Da Xi Lou
Originally built in 1891 and completed in 1895. The Great Stage is a complex structure comprising a three-storey singing building and a two-storey make-up building. The singing building consists of three sections: the fortune stage, the salary stage and the longevity stage, where different operas and plays could be performed at the same time. There were also performance props such as a spining board, a windlass and a high-pressure water machine, which made it possible to enact scenes of Gods coming down to earth from the sky, appartious fleeting underground and water spewing forth.
The Great Stage in the Summer Palace, the Free Tones Pavilion in the Forbidden City and the Clear Voice Pavilion in Chengde Summer Resort, Hebei Province, were renowned as the three great stages in the Qing Dynasty. Of these, the Great Stage in the Summer Palace was the biggest. Distinguished Beijing Opera Actors of the Qing Dynasty, like Yang Xiaolou and Tan Xinpei, would come here to perform for the Empress Dowager.
|
