If you like TV soaps, you'll love Taiwanese opera: earthy and tragic plots, colloquial dialogue, maudlin lyrics, sobbing arias, and high TPM (tears-per-minute) ratings.
Taiwanese opera originated in Ilan county, and its local roots have no doubt helped make it the island's most popular form of Chinese opera. Tradition has it that roughly a century ago, recent migrants from the mainland and longer-term Chinese residents combined songs popular in Fujian province with local folk dances to create the embryonic form of Taiwanese opera called lotisao.
The earliest style was starkly simple and usually performed during the parades that are an essential part of many folk religion festivities. Amateur opera performers accompanying the processions would periodically lay down four long sticks to form a square stage, then act out a short and often ludicrous story to the accompaniment of a few homemade musical instruments. Female roles were played by men, and only the heroine wore hair decorations and makeup.
Over the decades, lotisao retained much of its original singing styles and many of the gestures that were used in early folk dance, but its performances moved from ground-level up to temporary outdoor stages. Moreover, the repertoire expanded from brief episodes to complete plays. By this time, it had already started incorporating aspects of many different Chinese operatic forms from Guangdong and Fujian provinces, as well as Peking opera. The result was a uniquely Taiwanese operatic hybrid.
Taiwanese opera, like other forms, combines song, acrobatics, and martial arts. But singing is what gives it a special flavor. Oftentimes heartrending and downright depressing, the songs are easy to understand because they are sung naturally, rather than in the eardrum-wrenching falsetto typical of Peking opera.
According to Chang Hsuan-wen (張炫文), who has written a number of books and articles on the subject, Taiwanese opera has eleven major singing styles, with "seven words," tu-ma, and "tearful tone" being the most popular. "Seven words," the most representative style of the genre, consists of four-sentence stanzas, with each sentence having seven words. Purists say that if this style does not occur during a performance, it cannot be considered a genuine Taiwanese opera. Tu-ma is the most melodious form of singing and is used for romantic scenes, but "tearful tone" tops the popularity list, as sad circumstances abound in most scripts. This style became more prevalent during the Japanese occupation period (1895-1945), supposedly as a channel for Taiwanese to vent their sadness, frustration, and anger about colonial oppression.
Taiwanese opera is accompanied by at least eight different instruments, including flutes, strings, cymbals, and drums. Most groups have no more than five members, although the well-known Ming Hwa Yuan Taiwanese Opera Company uses ten or more musicians, formed along the lines of a Peking opera orchestra.
For much of its history, Taiwanese opera performances were decidedly impromptu. Troupes had no official scripts, so the actors had to follow the lead of their "play interpreter," who laid out the plot, outlined the action of the play, and organized the basic structure for each performance. At best, the actors had a detailed draft to follow, but if the instructions were vague--as often happened--they had great leeway to interpret their parts.
In recent years, impromptu operas have gradually disappeared, because they are too difficult for inexperienced younger actors. Besides, the improvisational approach often resulted in boring or vulgar performances. Today's larger troupes have compiled detailed scripts to make plots more compact and orderly.
Similar to other Chinese styles, the Taiwanese opera repertoire ranges from heartrending tragedies to riotous comedies, most based on events in Chinese history or legend. Generally speaking, tragedies have been performed more frequently. Recently, however, comedies seem to be making a comeback.
Perhaps the three most representative plays in Taiwanese opera are Shih Hsi-chi, a tragicomedy about a brave woman who helps revive the former glory of her husband's family, and two tragedies, Liang Shan-po and Chu Ying-tai and Chen San and Wu Niang .
Liang Shan-po and Chu Ying-tai is a famous Chinese love story. Liang and Chu were classmates who became lovers. But Liang was poor and Chu was a daughter of a rich family. Chu's family forced her to marry a rich man, whereupon Liang died from lovesickness. On Chu's wedding day, she visited Liang's tomb and burst into tears. Her true love apparently touched the hearts of the gods, because the grave suddenly split open, whereupon Chu jumped into her lover's tomb: both of them were then transformed into butterflies.
Chen San and Wu Niang follows a familiar tragic motif. Chen San loved the beautiful Wu Niang at first sight. He started working for Wu's family so that he could be closer to her. The two youths eventually became lovers. When Wu's family decided to marry her off to another person, Chen and Wu decided to elope. Because of a misunderstanding, however, both of them committed suicide.
In the past, the stage sets for these and other plays in the repertoire were simple, portable, and symbolic--for instance, a single, painted cloth covered the back of the stage, and a table would be used to represent a mountain. But troupes such as Ming Hwa Yuan and Hsin Ho Hsing have greatly improved their stage sets by building realistic scenery. Costumes draw on Peking opera, but are rarely as ornate. Makeup for female roles is closer to the Peking opera style, but male roles do not use such heavy and intricate facepaint.
From the earliest performances of lotisao to the first Taiwanese opera movie production in 1956, the local opera form enjoyed widespread popularity, especially because of its sentimental singing and unadulterated local flavor. But this was not to last. Competition from other types of entertainment gradually forced Taiwanese opera into a transition period, where it split into different performance formats: staged Taiwanese opera, modified lotisao, and radio, movie, and television versions.
In recent years, the movie and radio versions have essentially disappeared and, except for occasional performances by the Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Troupe, lotisao is seldom performed. The televised version, which is heavily influenced by a soap opera mentality, has lost many of the characteristics of traditional Taiwanese opera and is now considered by many people to be a new genre altogether. Outdoor performances, most often held at temple festivities, are falling off as well. Although there are 262 registered opera troupes, not many perform regularly.