Recorded 23 October 2010

Translated and annotated by Guo Chao

Lecturer

Huang Xiaowu 黃小午 (b. 1948), a Jiangsu Company laosheng 老生, studied with “chuan” generation (chuan zi bei 傳字輩) performers, including Zhou Chuanying 周傳瑛 and Zheng Chuanjian 鄭傳鑑 [all Appendix H]. His wife Wang Weijian 王維艱 is among the leading performers of laodan 老旦 roles of her generation.

Synopsis

The Palace of Lasting Life (Changsheng dian 長生殿) [Appendix F] is a chuanqi 傳奇 script by Hong Sheng 洪昇 (1645–1704) [Appendix G], completed in 1688. Also translated as The Palace of Eternal Youth and The Palace of Eternal Life, it deals with the familiar story of the doomed love between the Tang emperor Minghuang 唐明皇 (that is, the Xuanzong 玄宗 emperor Li Longji 李隆基, r. 685–762 CE) and Precious Consort Yang (Yang Guifei 楊貴妃; personal name Yang Yuhuan 楊玉環, 719–756 CE). The story of their love and its consequences already had a long tradition in fiction, verse, and drama before Hong's work. Whereas some of those treatments portray Yang as unfaithful and Minghuang as culpable for the An Lushan 安禄山 rebellion (755–763 CE) as a result of neglecting his responsibilities, Hong presents both figures sympathetically. One of the highlights of Qing drama and the kunqu stage, The Palace of Lasting Life is often cited “for its exceptional musicality, that is, for the marvelous fit between the words and the tune patterns Hong Sheng employed” (Zeitlin 2006, 458). The chuanqi script by Hong consists of 50 scenes, early performances of which reportedly lasted “three days and nights.” Both historically and at present, a more common way to perform this content would be to mix these scenes with highlights from other plays. From the mid-1980s onward, sequential kunqu 崑曲 versions of one or more sessions (for example, on consecutive evenings) have proven popular, including five-scene (1986) and four-session, 44-scene versions in Shanghai (2007) (Yang 2018, 29, 48–49, 63, 205).