Almost five hours of continuous playing later, I realized I was being invited to truly try to learn to play the xiao luo.Īccepting that invitation led to about two months of even longer rehearsals, during which I never felt more clumsy, poorly timed or inept, to the point of regularly dropping my striker, a piece of wood like a short paint mixer, with a pointed end.

This instrument, about seven inches in diameter, when properly struck, creates the most fantastic ascending gong tone used throughout operas to emphasize steps or strokes, often in battles or other dramatic points, in combination with the key snakeskin-on-wood drum, large gong and cymbals. Believing it would be very briefly before they really began and was also mainly part of a typically warm Chinese welcome I said 'sure.' They handed me a xiao luo 'small opera gong' and striker and I sat down. Well, at least I thought it was to observe.No less than 10 minutes after my arrival, they asked if I would like to play an instrument with them. Huaibei is in Anhui province and, with regional pride, a friend there gave me that factoid after I mentioned my watching Channel 11 often.īecause it sounded like fun and was a unique opportunity, I accepted an invitation to join the company on a Sunday afternoon to observe a rehearsal for their annual performance. I told them the story above and added that the Anhui Opera pre-dated the Beijing Opera. Later as we ate lunch together, company members, who noticed my rapt attention, asked how I became interested.

As the company performed various solo selections, I was simply transfixed by the live opportunity to hear and see all the subtleties and nuances of performance less than 15 feet away. In celebration of the August Moon celebration, the Boston Beijing Opera Company had been invited to perform. I have lunch some Tuesdays with the Happy Elders of the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association in Newton. In the over five years since returning home, that's as far as it went, until last fall. Were it not for that, or I had been listening on the radio, odds are I would not have become a fan at all. As mentioned, motion, including martial arts during the frequent battle scenes, costumes and make-up create arresting visual interest. Since virtually all broadcasts were only in Mandarin, on every other channel in the small city of Huaibei, I tended to choose programming with strong visual impact.

I owe my interest in this art form to CCTV channel 11, where they broadcast only Beijing Opera. The integral musical support consists of traditional string, wind and percussion instruments that provide both musical accompaniments to singing and crisp dramatic accent to the action on stage. Scenery, even in the most lavish presentations, tends toward the sparse. A character's role and nature can be known simply by observing. A performance combines highly stylized stage movement with powerful and unique singing while adorned in magnificent and highly symbolic costumes, hairstyles and colorful, mask-like, make-up. During a year teaching in China, I first became seriously aware of Beijing Opera.

Peking opera gong