Chinese Opera Artists 中国戏曲 01 Mei Lanfang 梅兰芳

Mei Lanfang (1884 - 1961) is a world famous maestro of Peking Opera in China. As the most renowned one among the "Four Famous Dan", Mei Lanfang had made prominent contribution to the popularization and improvement of Chinese Peking Opera. The Chinese Peking Opera performing system named after him is regarded as the model of oriental drama performing systems and one of the "Three Major Drama Performing Systems in the World" together with Russian Stanislavsky Performing System and German Brecht Performing System.

Born in an opera actor's family in Beijing, Mei Lanfang began to learn opera performing at eight. At the age of twenty, he became famous in Beijing and Shanghai. As an outstanding Peking Opera representative serving as a link between the past and the future, Mei Lanfang was brave in conducting reforms and innovations in numerous areas such as music, dressing, performance and dance. Furthermore, Mei Lanfang created the "Mei School" art of Peking Opera with unique performing mode and aria by assimilating the performance of Qingyi (a female role), Huadan (a vivacious young woman), Daomadan (a female warrior role) and other roles. In this way, he upgraded the art of Peking Opera to a higher level and made "Mei School" the most influential one in China. Accomplished successor of "Mei School" art include Li Shifang, Zhang Junqiu, Yan Huizhu, Du Jinfang and Mei Maojiu with numerous other students. Representative repertoires of "Mei School" art are The Drunken Beauty, Farewell to My Concubine, Lady General Mu Takes Command and Blade of Cosmos.

With the aim of popularizing the art of Peking Opera in foreign countries, Mei Lanfang visited Japan, America, Soviet union and other countries for many times. He communicated with lots of world-famous writers and artists such as Tagore, Golgi, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Lev Tolstoy, Stanislavsky, Bernard Shaw, Brecht, Chaplin and Fairbanks. He is unarguably an ambassador of Chinese culture.