Teochew opera: The Butterfly Lovers

The Chinese Opera Festival invites you to discover the varied forms of opera that were popular in Ancient China. The fourth and last even is dedicated to Teochew opera with the play The Butterfly Lovers.

 Summary: 

Young Zhu Yingtai would like to get an education, but little girls are banned from school by tradition. To defy the ban, she decides to dress up as a man and leave for Hangzhou to study. On the way, she meets the young scholar Liang Shanbo. They quickly become friends, get inseparable and take an oath of fraternity. They go to the academy together and study together for three years. Later on, Zhy Yingtai’s father asks her to return home as soon as possible. Before she leaves, she asks their master’s wife to act as a matchmaker to endorse her wedding to Liang Shanbo. However, when he gets to the Zhu’s to ask for Yingtai’s hand, his father already has promised her to Ma Wencai, son of the governor of the city of Cuocheng. Liang gets sick of heartbreak and dies shortly after. His lover requests that her wedding procession makes a detour to Liang Shanbo’s grave to pay him her respects. She swears that she will follow him into death when thunder strikes the grave and breaks it open. Yingtai throws herself info the grave and the reunited lovers turn into dancing butterflies.

The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai) is one of the most famous love stories in Chinese literature. It is played in several different types of Chinese Opera. Teochew opera, sung in Chaozhou in the North of the Guangdong, is in a dialect that is similar to the ones in the South of Fujian, the bordering province, and is also played in South-Eastern Asian. The story has known several movie adaptation, especially with a Yue opera movie from 1954, co-directed by Sang Hu and Huang Sha.

The legend of the hopeless lovers who choose death over separation is such a monument of Chinese mythology and culture that it was presented to the UNESCO to be registered on the list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. 

Main actors: LIN Yanyun, WANG Meifang 

Show performed by the First Company of the Guangdong Teochew Opera Theatre

For more information on other activities during the festival, visit the website of the Cultural Center of China.