Hiyooo. My name's VJ and I'm going to be telling y'alls 'bout the funky fresh Variety Opera Show we saw last night by the Shu Feng Ya Yun (Sichuan Opera and Folk Arts Performance). It was super rad. We got the best seats in the house: First two rows right in the center. Before the show started (and all throughout the show, too) we were served tea from these tea kettles with like crazy long spouts. Also, the tea was good, also. There were peanuts next to the tea, but I, along with the people who I was sharing the table with, didn't eat any. I don't really know why we didn't eat any; I like peanuts but just didn't feel like 'em just then I guess. Anyway, onto the acts! The introduction, or prelude, if you will, was a really sick Chinese band consisting of a lot of percussion instruments along with a violin-like instrument (but with only one string) and a trumpet-like instrument (it was at a much higher pitch. Gun to my head, I'd say it was considerably longer and the bell was smaller, but don't quote me on that.). The band played for a while, and then a chinese lady in a big old red dress-thing came out and thanked us for coming and talked about the show a little bit. First she did it in Mandarin, and then in English. The next act was a really dramatic opera piece. It was quite beautiful; the lead-singer-lady had a very piercing voice. The lead-singer-lady's voice kinda sorta reminded me of Ronnie James Dio (RIP) of the metal band Dio. The shoes were really striking. They were kinda like four-inch lifts, except they were rounded around the toe and the heel. After the opera, a man played two pieces on that violin-like instrument with the bow attached to it. Golly, I sure wish I could remember the name. You guys can probably wikipedia what it's called, though. The cooler piece was the second one, which was called something like "Galloping Horse." It was rad because the dude imitated the sound of a horse with his instrument by using heavy vibrato and dramatic volume swells at very high pitches. NEEEIGH! The next act was my personal favorite. This guy did a shadow puppet act, entirely with his hands. It was so realistic it was scary. First he made a couple of birds which he interacted with, and then he went on to make a dog, a couple of bunnies, a horse, a cat, and finally a dog which chased after a rabbit and ate it. His attention to detail was so brilliant; he even realistically depicted the swallowing of the prey. Awesome. After the shadow puppet guy was a guy playing that trumpet-like instrument I mentioned earlier. Some people thought the sound was too nasally, but I dug it. What was trippy was sometimes he'd get rid of the rest of the trumpet and just play the mouthpiece, and in parts of the song he got rid of everything and just made rad squeaking sounds with his mouth. Blew. My. Mind. Man it was crazy noises, man. The next act was pretty long. It was a scene, basically. It was all in Mandarin/a local dialect, but what I understood was a woman made a funny bald man hold a flaming dish on his head and do tricks like crawl under a bench and stuff. Apparently it was hilarious. The final act, the grand finale, if you will, was the infamous changers. It was SO COOL SO COOL AAAH they changed faces right in front of you; sometimes they didn't cover up at all. They just disappeared. There was also a guy blowing fire as part of the act. The theatricality was brilliantly executed and words can barely do the face-changers justice. As a perfect end to a perfect night, Oliver gifted all of us with makeup packages from the Sichuan Opera. Pretty chill, man. Hope you guys enjoyed my recount of the opera. I think there should be pictures up, too. Enjoy those, too. VJ out.
--
Andrew P. Davis
Director of Admission
Crystal Springs Uplands School
400 Uplands Drive
Hillsborough, CA 94010
650-342-4175 x1517
No comments:
Post a Comment