Mulianxi Opera

 

 

Mulianxi opera is the general name of the opera mainly about the theme of Mulian saved his mother. The general idea of this story is like this: the three generations of Fu Family are all Buddhism believers. After the Fuxiang who was the householder of Fu family died, his wife Liu Qingti, also called Liu Siniang, broke the prohibition of Buddhism and killed many domestic animals, besides ate the meat everyday. After her death, she was thrown into the eighteenth-class hell (in Chinese Buddhist theory, the hell was separated into 18 floor, and the ghosts are closed in different floor according to more or few wrongdoings they did when they are alive ). She suffered from a lot of punishments. His son Mulian went to west for praying the bodhisattva in order to save his mother. The bodhisattva gave him Yulanpeng Sutra and the sacred tin stuff to help him save his mother out of hell. Finally he succeeded.

As the religion opera, Mulianxi opera is more representative in Chinese opera history. Traditionally many people have been crazily watching this opera all day long. They released their loyalty for religion via Mulianxi opera watching. Meanwhile it is also for leisure. The sorrow, glad, anger and others, the thundering, lightning, immortals and ghosts and so on are all shown and many stunts are also used for making the opera more attractive. In music, other than the traditional music, the folk music, Buddhism-theme music and other styles of music are also used for colorizing the performance. The moving story and the excellent performance won a lot of praise for Mulianxi opera. It is also called Opera Mother by many artists or performers in China.