RED BOAT TROUPES AND CANTONESE ... - University of Georgia

perform at venues such as Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and at performing halls in Atlantic City,
during the lunar New Year.
Art cultivation is highly influenced by local culture, language, and environment.
Cantonese opera is certainly seasoned with unique characteristics, much influenced by the open,
contingent nature of its coastal people. Yet, it retains some conservatism and traditionalism.
Following is what Bell Yung wrote about Cantonese opera in Hong Kong:
Some performance practices in Cantonese Opera reflect what other regional operas have
long lost; yet it is in many ways the most progressive of all Chinese operas in view of its
development over the last eighty years. It is also ‘living’ because of its intimate
relationship with the lives of the Cantonese people; its role as ritual as well as
entertainment is still very much evident in the cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong today…It
is “living” in its performance practice: a performance on stage can be considered a
continual “creative process” rather than a static “display.” 9
The citizens of Guangdong are relatively open-minded because of their access to
information and culture from foreign countries: “Just like Cantonese dishes, Cantonese opera is
unique, special and attractive. It has the basic potential of preservation and development.” 10
Perhaps the opera itself is like the culture of these coastal people who bravely withstand big
waves and crossing the ocean in spite of adversity, always looking forward for change, and yet
retaining some conservatism in their nostalgia. The large number and widespread emigration of
Cantonese to different parts of the world makes Cantonese opera the most performed opera genre
in the diasporas. Cantonese Opera is probably one of the easiest to study by Western trained
musicians because of the similarity of the scale system. Many Western elements have been
incorporated into the music since the 1920s.
9
Bell Yung, Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
ix.
10
Leung P. G. “Koi Lun Yuet Kek [Discourse on Cantonese Opera] (paper presented at the International Seminar on
Cantonese Opera, Hong Kong, November 18-20, 1992).
6