Drumming and Reviling Cao (Ji Gu Ma Cao)
Overview. Drumming and Reviling Cao (also called Beating the Drum and Reviling Cao, or The Feast of Ministers) is a laosheng singing play drawn from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the episode of Mi Heng drumming and reviling Cao Cao.
Synopsis. At the end of the Han, the proud and gifted scholar Mi Heng is recommended to Cao Cao by Kong Rong, but receives no proper courtesy; Cao Cao, wishing to humiliate him, assigns Mi Heng the lowly post of drummer. At a feast, Mi Heng strips and drums, enumerating Cao Cao's crimes to the face, a痛快 denunciation that displays the unbroken spirit of a scholar. He is eventually dispatched to Jingzhou, where he meets his death.
Artistic Features. The play centers on the laosheng role's drumming and成套 arias; Mi Heng's reviling-Cao passages, long erhuang yuanban and liushui, flow with exhilarating force, a famous piece combining singing and acting for the laosheng.
Why Watch. Drumming and Reviling Cao moves with the defiance that a scholar may be killed but not humiliated, a classic excerpt of the Three Kingdoms repertoire that reveals a literatus's unbending backbone.
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