The Model Operas of 1967

In 1967 eight works became model pieces, and Peking opera was dressed in a mixed Chinese-Western orchestra.

Eight works were named models, which gave the whole country a reproducible method, from vocal style down to the makeup of the orchestra.

Time and place

Beijing, summer 1964, where a national festival of modern Peking opera was held. In May 1967 eight works were formally designated revolutionary model operas, and for the next decade they were copied, filmed and adapted for ballet.

What happened

The 1964 festival brought a group of newly written modern Peking operas to Beijing. In May 1967 eight works were named model operas, five Peking operas including The Red Lantern, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and Shajiabang, two ballets, The Red Detachment of Women and The White-Haired Girl, and the symphonic Shajiabang. Yu Huiyong led the reform of vocal writing and of the orchestra.

What changed

Peking opera became a national template rather than one regional drama among many. The band was rebuilt as a mixed Chinese and Western ensemble, with jinghu and erhu beside violins and brass; arias were redesigned around character, and motifs and orchestration were written into the full score. Stage heroes were fixed as flawless and larger than life, and the music had to serve that image. During the 1970s the method reached film, radio and schools and became the listening memory of a generation. After 1976 it was repudiated as a political symbol, yet the mixed orchestra and the craft of aria design survived.

Listen for the turn

The library holds no model opera recordings, so three songs of the same era set the coordinates. Begin with Singing Toward Beijing, where high register and unison fold a personal voice into a collective, the most common tone of a model opera aria. Then Wearing Two Red Flowers to Beijing, whose march drumming and major-key tune come close to a model opera overture. Finally A Letter Sent to Beijing, with its rising phrase ends and held final notes, showing how close the hymn tone is to a Peking opera melisma. None is opera, but together they establish the high, bright, unison sound.

Related

This turn connects 京剧的形成, 民族管弦乐队 and 音乐与政治.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 样板戏条目与年代核对，未引用
• Grove Music Online, entry "China, People's Republic of" — model opera and orchestra checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.