Jade Hall Spring

The google translating of the lyrics for this were fascinating. Appears to be from the point of view of a prostitute/kept woman, recounting the arrivals, expenditures and departures of a cruel prince and some other characters. Kind of a “walk on the wild side” thematically.

By googling the artist name (程艷秋 Chéng Yànqiū) I was able to find this rather amazing website that links to gobs of “Peking Opera” recordings (none of those links worked for me) and factoids (in Chinese, of course). Scanning the discography for the artist, I could see the title (玉堂春 Yùtáng chūn) recurred several times with different recording dates. I clicked on the link for “libretto” (italian term for the “booklet”— the lyrics— of an opera) on each of them. They were each different, and one exactly matched the lyrics of the record in my collection.

So this tells me that the recording (if it’s the same recording, which seemingly it ought to be) dates to 1929 and features 穆铁芬 Mu Tiefen on the jinghu (京胡 — that bowed 2-stringed instrument with the snakeskin drumhead.). Apparently it was released by a different recording company (高亭 Gaoting) than the one that made my copy (G.S. = presumably Golden Star Records). This is more than I know about any of the other rekkids so far.

Exciting!

Also— cos this blog is being read by helpful ppl— I may be able to get some questions about “the music scene” answered by people who know more about Chinese instruments and culture. I’ll have to figure out what I want to ask.

I spent a lot of time researching and contemplating Butterfly Dream, and my working hypothesis is currently that it’s a Cantonese opera version of Madame Butterfly. Check back on that post later for updates.