Revolutionary opera
Originally, eight revolutionary operas (Chinese: Ba Ge Yangban Xi, 八个样板戏) were produced, eighteen by the end of the period.
Instead of the "emperors, kings, generals, chancellors, maidens, and beauties" of the traditional Peking opera, which was banned as "feudalistic and bourgeois," they told stories from China's recent revolutionary struggles against foreign and class enemies.
Although they originated as operas, they soon appeared on LPs, in comic books (lianhuanhua), on posters, postcards, and stamps; on plates, teapots, wash basins, cigarette packages, vases, and calendars.
[2] The Eight Model Operas dominated the stage in all parts of the country during these years, leading to the joke "Eight hundred million people watched eight shows.
They consisted of five modern operas (The Legend of the Red Lantern, Shajiabang, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Raid on the White Tiger Regiment, and On the Docks), two ballets (Red Detachment of Women and The White Haired Girl), and one symphony (also Shajiabang, which is more precisely a cantata).
The Legend of the Red Lantern was also adapted to a piano-accompanied cantata by the pianist Yin Chengzong, which was basically a cycle of arias excerpted from the opera.
[7] Mobile film units brought cinematic recordings of the operas into the countryside and played an important role in popularizing and standardizing the art form.
[8] The revolutionary operas were regarded as some of the newborn socialist things (shehuizhuyi xinsheng shiwu) arising during the Cultural Revolution.
[6] The narratives of these women protagonists begin with them oppressed by misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of their own internal strength and the Communist Party.
[10] The new revolutionary theatrical forms were praised as "shining victories" of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong Thought.
An article published in the Red Flag journal under a pen name stated, "The glorious achievement of revolutionary operas marked a revolution in art by the proletariat.
In the series of revolutionary model operas nurtured by beloved Comrade Jiang Qing, the image of proletarian heroes is established; the stage that has been controlled by landlords and representatives of the bourgeoisie for the past thousand years is now gone.
[16]: 160 American tourist groups in China during the early 1970s typically included at least one of The White Haired Girl or the Red Detachment of Women in their itineraries.
According to Liu Kang from Duke University: During a 1996 North American tour, the China Central Ballet repeatedly performed The Red Detachment of Women as its grand finale, which caused postmodern audiences in Los Angeles and New York to marvel at the opera's innovative multipositionality and hybridity, in which revolutionary ideologies, exotic nativist music and dances of the Li ethnic minority on Hainan Island, and high European styles and modalities coalesce in a neo-Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.
[18]The three most popular Peking operas are The Legend of the Red Lantern, Shajiabang, and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.
And the ballet that still shows a considerable vitality today is Red Detachment of Women, the one that was presented to Richard Nixon, President of the United States, who visited China in 1972, seven years before the normalization of the Sino-US relationship.
