This takes more than an hour and involves a court of maidens in full regalia, a couple of smart-aleck courtiers and constant music - from the strumming of two-stringed Chinese 'erhu' to the clashing of cymbals.Īs the opera progresses, Deng Min, 23, the third-year college student playing its lead role, sinks more and more at the knees tends to lean on anything handy and finally dips down to the floor in a few impressively slow backbends to emphasize the concubine draining the last drops from her cups of alcohol.

Concubine Yang is jealous, so she drinks several cups of alcohol and becomes progressively more tipsy.

The emperor is off with two other concubines. A rebellion led by her adopted son marked the beginning of the end of one of China's greatest dynasties.

Yang Guifei is perhaps the most famous concubine in Chinese history a Tang Dynasty emperor was so infatuated with her that she controlled the court. That could be seen on a recent weekday afternoon at the school, when some of its students staged an informal dress rehearsal of a famed opera, 'Yang Guifei Becomes Intoxicated.' If the character is sad, she's really sad. Ericsson says she came to China to study Peking Opera because, as opposed to Western theater's naturalism, it is 'so melodramatic. Then they do it so delicately that they make it look easy.' These skills are pursued with a diligence uncommon in the West, says one of the school's half-dozen or so foreign students, Anna Ericsson, a 27-year-old Swedish actress.'When they study a skill,' she says, 'they do it until it's perfect. They start during their junior high school years and spend seven to 10 years studying myriad skills: music, voice, acting, history, literature, language, acrobatics, stage design and directing. It's remarkable then that the school has about 600 students who've opted to spend their lives performing traditional Chinese operas.

'Peking Opera is subtle and slow, like sitting and drinking tea.' 'In today's market economy, no one has time for traditional opera,' says Wang Xu, 27, who is studying to be an opera director.

When did chinese opera begin