英文摘要
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In early 1949, the famous Chinese Opera stars from Shanghai, Tai Chi-Hsia and Gu Zheng- Chiu, made their respective debuts at the Hsinmin Theatre and Yongle Theatre in Taipei: this was considered a stage duel since the locations of these two theatres were close. At the Hsinmin Theatre, with the title of "Queen of Chinese Opera", Tai had already successfully tested herself against audiences in Shanghai, Hankou, Qingdao and other major harbors, and came to Taiwan to join the Haisheng Chinese Opera Troupe, which was led by Hsu Hong-Pei, and was famous for its Shanghai style Chinese opera and martial arts. On the other hand, Gu was taught by many famous masters at the Shanghai Opera School, and was the official pupil of Mei Lan-Fang, the head of the four famous Dan (kind of female role) actors. Her repertoire at the Yongle Theatre was mainly traditional old plays or so called Peking style Chinese opera. This month-long duel of the two opera stars was a repeated occurrence during their careers, but for audiences seeing those two female actors on stage was quite enjoyable. After a month , Tai left the Hsinmin Theatre and went south to make a living, and Gu brought five golden years to the Yongle Theatre. The competition seemed to come to a traceless ending, but in fact it reflected the transformation of Taipei into a political and economic center, and the sober changes in its theatrical fashion after a large number of military personnel and civilians emigrated from the mainland. That is, the competition between Gu and Tai was actually a skirmish or a trial balloon during the evolution of theatrical fashion in Taipei before political forces officially influenced theatrical circles. Personal memoirs and academic discourses have not yet paid attention to this event, so this study is the first effort to cut into the historical story of the duel between Tai and Gu, using comments collected from supporters of both sides in newspapers from the time and compared with field interviews to make a complete sketch of the contours of the duel between two renowned female actors. We then analyzed both sides’repertoire arrangement strategies to understand their competitive methods, and finally demonstrated other possible internal and external causes of influencing the change of fashion, other than political forces, through the perspectives of feedback from the audience, the characteristics of cultural background, the internal psychology of the actors, and the rigid thinking of Shanghai style Chinese opera.
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