The second season of the opera culture variety show Zuimei Zhongguoxi (lit: the most splendid Chinese operas) is being broadcast on BTV. The show leads the audience to understand traditional culture through ancient and modern times in a vivid, interesting, and acceptable way.

The variety show is a combination of an outdoor garden reality show and an opera performance show, which has received a good response after the first season was broadcast on BTV last year. The second season is newly released, with the role-playing of "Study Group of Opera in Summer Palace" as the main line. Led by actor He Bing, the program aims to create an immersive drama-in-play. It is reported that the second season of the program will select Lady General Mu Takes Command, The Palace of Eternal Youth, The Romance of The West Chamber, In Extremely Good Fortune, Madame White Snake, Bao Zheng,The Butterfly Lovers, and Goddess Marriage as eight classic opera stories, based on the drama text to carry out a variety of audio-visual interpretation.

The show explores the integration of traditional operas and contemporary art forms in terms of program forms and expression methods. For example, in the first episode of Lady General Mu Takes Command, Olympic champion Xu Mengtao was invited to the show. She learned the clips of skiing in Peking Opera and talked about the training routine in preparation for the Winter Olympic Games. The program showed young audiences the different styles of the great women in ancient and modern times.

The program also staged Music and Dance with Neon Dress, which showed the prosperity of the prosperous Kaiyuan Reign Period in the Tang Dynasty. The audience and guests talked about the costumes and aesthetic orientation in the Tang Dynasty from the perspectives of modern people. Actor He Bing concluded that the prosperous society in the Tang Dynasty is full of vitality, which is reflected by the aesthetic orientation that regarded fat as beauty and the style of clothing. He also explored the connection between ancient costumes and modern costumes in a creative way.

Opera is an ancient art, but it is gradually drifting away from modern life. The Most Splendid Chinese Operas introduces the opera culture from costumes, faces, lyrics, and so on. The connection between tradition and modernity shortens the distance between the audience and the opera, leading the audience to appreciate the profound cultural heritage of Chinese opera step by step, and promoting the development of the opera variety show.

Translator: WANG Jiahui

Reviewer: YE Lijuan