The Kunqu-Opera: A Multi-Structural-Organized                 

              Performing Art

            (A explantive Brief for the performance of the Jiangsu Kunqu    

             Troupe at the Openning  day of the Nanjing 11^th IASS congress)

The Kun-qu Opera (literally: “kun”=name of a place, “qu” = vocal music; namely an opera-genre originating in Kun-Shan county, Jiangsu Province) is regarded as the top-level achievement in the history of traditional Chinese opera and music; it has been included into the List of the Non-Material Cultural Heritage of UNESCO since 2001. As a synthetic performing art Kunqu consists of various elements of music, dancing, poetry, drama and painting. Based on a long formative history it was well shaped 400 years ago and maintained its creative development for the next 200 years. Despite an ever-weakening process since then Kunqu has effectively survived till today. It is interesting to note that this historical performing art is characterized by its multiply structuralized composition and therefore also become a typical object of the art-semiotic studies. The Jiangsu Kunqu Troupe, that will stage a set of kunqu scenes for the international participants at the Nanjing 11^th IASS Congress, is one of the six Kunqu-Opera centers in China.

Kunqu Opera is an artistic system of signs and signification, implying its strictly regulated “vocabulary” and “grammar”. It is a multiply patterned performing art that is different from the Western opera by its more synthetic and formalistic constitution as well as by its relatively less dramatic incorporation. It is an performing art with a strong  formalized styles and a poetic symbolism, while on the other hand its literary and dramatic parts mainly play a supportive role as the background and framework within which the three main elements of vocal music, dancing and poetic reciting  play their reciprocally matching roles. The central part of the Kunqu art is even mainly embodied in the bilateral cooperative performance of singing and dancing as such. Simply, kunqu can even be just called an art of singing and dancing. And both singing and dancing here are taken in an expanded sense. The former contains the vocal music and the musically operated pronunciation and reciting on the basis of the Chinese unique Four-Tone phonetics, and the latter includes the dancing and a variety of body movements with delicately stylized facial expressions and finger gesture language. All these processes of singing and dancing are performed according to the strictly patterned and delicately stylized rules and schemes. The musical patterns of the Kunqu have both static and dynamic dimensions, which consist respectively of the fixed reservoir of several hundreds of tune-types and a particular set of selective tune-types for a single performance.  All those stylized rules and their artistically creative performances are realized through the highly skilled actresses and actors who are also classified into several fixed types. Thus the Kunqu art lives on the qualified playing of the performers. And a performance of Kunqu is similar to a creative realization of the organically selected set of patterned rules of different performing media.

      The Kunqu is in essence a lyrical opera, instead of a musical drama, but its poetic spirit is displayed at two levels: at the denotative level the lyrical content is expressed directly by the semantic part of libretto, while at the connotative level its lyrical part is symbolically expressed through the artistic way of the mutually matching performance of singing and dancing movements. The poetic-symbolic aspect of Kunqu is even more realized by those non-verbal media: vocal music and body movement. Therefore there exists a lyrical-semantic stratification in Kunqu with its top layer of esthetic mood and poetic-emotional sublimation. The latter can only be attained by the highly skilled playing of actors. This specially organized poetic spirit of Kunqu conforms to the same lyrical essence shared by all other traditional categories of Chinese literature and arts.

     A semiotic analysis of the Kunqu opera can more effectively help explaining its true aesthetic mechanism and its historical vicissitudes from a hermeneutic-anthropologic point of view. Any commercialized attempt based on an aesthetic-epistemological misconception to rashly revise the innate structure and traditionally fixed performing manners of the Kunqu could lead to the damage of its essential status . From a cultural-scientific angle an urgent task of the present-day Kunqu art problem lies in effectively preserving its original constitution, that relies on the strict training of the Kunqu performers during our modernized period. An emerging Kunqu-semiotics could more deeply help us grasp the related theoretical and practical problems.

       昆曲：一种具有结构性特征的表演艺术

   （有关江苏昆剧团在南京第11届国际符号学大会开幕式当晚演出

         的符号学意涵简介）

昆曲是中国最优秀的传统艺术之一，由音乐、舞蹈、文学、戏剧、美术等不同媒介因素综合构成，2001年曾被联合国教科文组织评定为首批世界优秀“非物质类文化遗产”之一。纵观其四百年前兴盛至两百年前渐趋衰弱而仍能延续至今的发展过程，其固有艺术性价值与其在现代化时期的文化历史际遇并无内在关系。作为今日中国保存的稀有传统剧种，其多层次的“程式化”特征，使其成为当今跨文化艺术研究的宝贵资源。在南京第11届国际符号学大会期间前来演出的江苏昆剧团，为中国当代少数昆曲表演中心之一。对于不熟悉中国历史文化背景的国际学者来说，初次欣赏和理解昆曲艺术可能有陌生之感，但从比较美学和跨文化符号学角度对此古老东方表演艺术进行一次直接的体验，还是很有意义的。

昆曲可被称为一种具有结构-符号学特征的表演艺术，其“构造”与艺术功能并不同于西方歌剧。西洋歌剧主要由戏剧部分和音乐部分合成，而昆曲则是由音乐、舞蹈、诗词诸组成部分有机综合而成，其中戏剧部分其实主要作为该综合性表演的“背景”或“框架”而发挥其配合的作用。因此从美学上将昆曲归为“戏剧类”不仅欠准确，而且会导致如下的美学性的和文化人类学上的误解：以为可通过编修剧情以使其适合时代观众的审美需要。昆曲艺术的精华即表现在其各个组成部分（唱、舞、诗、做、念）的分别的以及相互配合的实现过程中，而在其静态构成和动态构成两方面昆曲均具有明显的结构性特征。其音乐部分不仅包括声乐、器乐而且包括唱词发声中的长短、强弱、顿挫、以及中国语音学中特有的“四声”及“平仄”等发音学方面的综合运用。其“音乐性”不仅表现在声音和乐器的定式化的旋律上，而且表现在其言语发声方式的规则性变化上，包括通过言语流内定式化的拖长、停顿、叠字、增字法等的综合性变化。因此，其“声乐”部分实由唱腔旋律和词语发声变化共同组成。其舞蹈部分，则涉及身体的一切部位，特别是“面部表情”和“手势”部分。与“四声意指系统”一样，手势和其他姿态的喻意系统亦极为细致丰富。昆曲的“结构性特征”特别表现在其多层次的“程式化”构成特点上。其中音乐部分的程式化“曲牌”多达数百种，均由预先编成的曲调型式构成。每种曲牌的固定型式涉及其旋律型态、相配的固定歌词字位数目等。舞蹈部分的程式化表现在其全部运用的动作元素（手、足、眼、头、腰、步态等基本动作单元）都是预先规定的。甚至于连服装和道具均具有固定化格式规定。一出昆曲的形成就是在选择的戏剧情节框架内将各种音乐、舞蹈、诗词的基本元素（“昆剧字汇”）及其各种定式化“型式”（如曲牌和词调的丰富多样化的选择性搭配，可相当于“昆曲句法”）“组合”成一个表演性的艺术整体。正和传统绘画和诗词一样，其美学技术性方面的共同特点是：在有限“空间”内运作各种“既定基本喻意元素”，对其施以不断变换的组合搭配。上述一切昆曲基本构成性成分及其多层次型式，均通过角色（演员）的高超技巧加以创造性的综合表现。而“角色”也按照固定格式分成若干种固定的类别。具体的“演出”相当于对既定多重结构性因素和格式系统所进行的一种美学选择性的配置，也即在表演技术性层次上进行的一次创造性的“例示化”实践。