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

This report includes voices from various performers of Cantonese Opera. Mr, Wong Toa
represents performers of the Red Boat Era; Mr. Yuen Siu Fai, a lead-role professional performer,
leader of the Eight Harmony Guild of the Performers, is an activist in the development of
Cantonese opera; Ms. Tse Suet Sum, a lead-role performer, plays both women and men, and is a
television star; Mr. Liu Hon Wo is an amateur opera organizer, an instrumentalist, and an opera
teacher and on board of opera education in Hong Kong; Ms. Chan Sau Hing is an amateur lead-
singer and teacher; Mr. Paris Wong, a young man who plays female roles, is an activist in
organizing opera activities, and a teacher who trains young performers. The interviewees also
include family members, friends, even elderly women who sat on planes next to me. I also
interviewed elderly men and women who had attended Red Boat Troupe performance before
WWII. From their sincere discussions with me, and my observations in Hong Kong and
Vancouver, I examine the reasons for the decline of audience, and hope to find ways to help
preserve, document, and develop the precious cultural heritage of Cantonese Opera.
Literature Review:
Literature that has been written in the English language is rare, partly because singing
and oral delivery are in Cantonese, and partly because the art has not received respect and
attention. Only a few articles and books were written on the music of Chinese opera prior to
Prof. Rulan Pian’s analysis of Peking Opera at Harvard in the 1960s. 13 Cantonese opera studies
have benefitted from Pian’s student Dr. Bell Yung, and Yung’s student Dr. Sau Y. Chan. 14 Chan
and his students published other books in Chinese on Cantonese opera at the Chinese University
13 Rulan Chao Pian’s article “Aria Structure Patterns in the Peking Opera” is one of the earliest articles in English
on analyzing Chinese opera. “Aria Structure Patterns in the Peking Opera,” in Chinese and Japanese Music-
Dramas, ed. J.I. Crump and William P. Malm (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan. 1976), 65-89.
14 Bell Yung, Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Chan, Sau Y. Improvisation in a Ritual Context. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1991.
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