Study On The Inheritance And Development Of Wu Opera Under The Background Of Multi-culture

Wu Opera, the second largest local opera in Zhejiang Province, which covers Jinhua, Quzhou and some counties in Hangzhou and Lishui today, can be traced back to at least four hundred years ago. It was included in the second catalogue of national intangible cultural heritage list in June2008.It is the art form of historical heritage in Jinqu and its surroundings, and the culture medium which the regional groups seek their identity from and belong to. But in multiple contexts of globalization, modernization, and urbanization, the social environment, economic foundation and cultural soil which Wu Opera relies on have changed dramatically. With the growing awareness of multi-cultural diversity, local cultural identity, and cultural heritage protection, Wu Opera has become the important content to build its flow space of cultural ecology.Multi-culture is an objective description of Wu Opera’s context of its inheritance and development. It breaks through the border of Wu Opera and beyond its external factors, runs through the history, present and future, showing the complicated system, three-dimensional and multi-level. Specifically, it can be not only used to refer to the linear framework of traditional culture and modern culture, but also the spatial structure of global culture and focal culture; it can be used to refer to the relationships among Wu Opera and other entertainments, but also the symbiotic interaction among different tunes in the internal of Wu Opera, and so on.From the perspective of multi-culture, the paper adopts a variety of research methods, such as field investigation and case study. Meanwhile, the aspects such as evolution, current observation and cultural perspective are discussed as a starting point. Finally, by judgments from research and conclusions from involvement, related issues of Wu Opera’s inheritance and development are fully illustrated.This paper, including introduction and conclusion, is divided into five parts.The introduction explains the research object and related circumstances.The first chapter analyses Wu Opera’s geographic ecology and cultural space in its development, explores its historical trend and the basic context of its formation and development, based on documents collection and historical records, through the historical research of Wu Opera’s origin and evolutioa Consequently, in-depth analyses of its origin and evolution are made and historical basis and practical references for its inheritance and development are offered.The formation of Wu Opera has resulted from the special historical conditions and cultural ecology. As a result, its inheritance and development cannot be divorced from the original social ecology. The localization of external tunes and the Integration of local tunes are the initial form of Wu Opera, and the process of the tunes joint performing largely reflects the evolution of Wu Opera. As a local opera, Wu Opera may never break through the narrow geographical space to become more popular, but this regionalism is also the most rooted cultural charm. Focusing on the local narration, Wu Opera may inherit and develop itself better.The second chapter explores the dynamic practices of the development of Wu Opera and comprehensively investigates the current situation of Wu Opera, centering on fieklwork and research, through the overall analysis of the Wu Opera heritage carrier and case studies of Zhejiang Wu Opera Troupe and Jinhua Youth Troupe. The data of more than20,000performances every year have strongly indicated the great vitality of Wu Opera, much better comparing with other endangered operas. But problems like the aging population and bw education of audiences imply its potential crisis.Moreover, the two different identities of state-owned and private troupes, the two different management systems of actors and staff, and the two different show forms of improvisational performance and script drama, finally formed different assessments of professional theater and occupational theater in and outside of the industry. In fact, during the inheritance and development of Wu Opera, Zhejiang Wu Opera Troupe as a state-owned one which has dominated the overwhelming resources, its operas are recognized as the best of Wu Opera. But the total number of its daily performance repertoire available is less than half of that of Jinhua Youth Troupe, which makes it comparatively weak when challenged by the private troupes. The issue of which kind of troupes is better between state-owned and private troupes is discussed throughout the analyses and comparison among the case study.The third chapter outlines the social-ecobgical and development space from multidimensional perspective, by examining the relative stability of its cultural identity and the relative variability of its values, presenting the complexity of practical context during its inheritance and development, and analyzing the realistic dilemma during the inheritance and development of Wu Opera from the perspective of the multivariate context. As a local opera and multi-tune opera which have integrated the great tradition and little tradition, Wu Opera features of microscopic characteristics like rough performance, defending tenaciously tradition and diverse aggregation. These particularities are embedded internally in its cultural connotation and historical heritage, and displayed externally among its performances, music and singing, which strongly show why Wu Opera is called "Wu Opera". Both inheritance and innovation exist in the dynamic change of its values, which presented itself as transition from entertainment value to economic significance and transition from educational value to cultural significance.In the context of collision between globalization and localization, tradition and modern, cities and villages, Wu Opera feces the value reconstruction based on geographical cultural identity, the change from the "traditional Wu Opera" to "Modern Wu Opera", and the focus shifting from rural to urban areas. Meanwhile, Wu Opera possesses the dual nature of folk art and the non-heritage items, which leads to an antagonistic relationship between artistic orientation and intangible cultural heritage’s dimension in its practice, and role ambiguity of the government and society in its inheritance and development, highlighting the contradictory relationship between the public service and commercialization of Wu Opera. These issues run through in all aspects and the entire process during the inheritance and development of Wu Opera.The forth Chapter examines the related policies and solutions of Wu Opera’s development, identified the focuses and difficulties concerning the inheritance and development of Wu Opera, and has also provided suggestions and enlightenment for the future practices of Wu Opera.The last part is the summary of the full text and further considerations.