The Hegemon-King Bids His Concubine Farewell

Introduction

The Peking opera The Hegemon-King Bids His Concubine Farewell draws on Shen Cai's Ming Kunqu play The Tale of a Thousand Gold and on the annals of Xiang Yu in the Records of the Grand Historian. Yang Xiaolou and Shang Xiaoyun first staged the story in Beijing in 1918 under the title The Chu–Han Contest. Qi Rushan wrote a new draft, Wu Zhenxiu helped to cut it, and on 15 February 1922 Yang played Xiang Yu opposite Mei Lanfang as Consort Yu under the present title. The first draft ran to more than twenty scenes, which were cut to twelve by 1936 and to eight after 1949. Its most celebrated passage is Consort Yu's sword dance, set to the tune Deep Night from the Kunqu scene Longing for the World, for which Mei studied taiji sword and taiji boxing. The play became a classic of the Mei school of qingyi roles.