Chongqing - February 26 witnessed that a new Sichuan opera - Flowers Floating and Water Flowing, was staged at the Guotai Arts Center of Chongqing. This play is adapted from the story of the traditional Sichuan opera Qingyun Palace. With melodious sound and brilliant performance, the opera presented a brand-new visual and aural feast to classic Chinese Sichuan opera lovers.

Sichuan opera "Flowers Floating and Water Flowing" (photo / Chengdu Sichuan Opera Research Institute)

With the national top playwright, director, composer, designers, and opera actors and actresses participating, the opera Flowers Floating and Water Flowing was an important opera released by the Chengdu Sichuan Opera Research Institute in 2022, and it also belonged to the large-scale stage art creation funding projects of the Sichuan Art Fund in 2022. 

Accompanied by the melodious sound of gongs and drums featured with Sichuan opera, the performance was unveiled. It was the first time the play was performed outside of Sichuan Province. Although it was themed as a "court play," there was neither the scramble for power among men nor competition for favor among women. The audience only felt the "struggle of the soul" of roles in the play. The audience would see kindhearted women struggling not to descend to murderers who would kill each other or compassionate women with love and friendship in their hearts trapped in the abyss of sorrow, anger, and desperation and struggling for relief under the autocratic rule of the emperor in the patriarchal society. 

The roles in the play struggled to choose love or hatred, gratitude or grudge, life or death, their genuine and kind hearts, or fake and evil parts. The roles’ emotional pain and rational thinking made the audience thoroughly understand their mental journeys and experience voyeuristic humanistic empathy for the characters.

The audience is reading the introduction of the opera ( photo/Chengdu Sichuan Opera Research Institute)

What’s worth mentioning is the core character of the whole play, the queen, whose suffering firmly grasped the audience's heartstrings. Her true love and human dignity were trampled on by her husband contemptuously. Although she was impacted by jealousy and evil in human nature, her conscience always made her stay kind. Her beautiful singing voice and excellent performance highlighted the whole play and gained bursts of applause from the audience.

It is reported that from February 26 to March 4, three Sichuan Operas from Chengdu Sichuan Opera Research Institute are being presented at Guotai Arts Center. These Sichuan Operas will contribute significantly to constructing the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle in terms of literature and art and help carry forward Chinese traditional culture.