The Unicorn Purse

Introduction

Written by Weng Ouhong at Cheng Yanqiu's request and first staged at the Golden Theatre in Shanghai in 1940

The Unicorn Purse is a signature play of the Cheng school of Peking opera, written by the playwright Weng Ouhong at the request of Cheng Yanqiu, from a story in an early Qing notebook quoted by Jiao Xun. According to Cheng's son Cheng Yongjiang, the script was commissioned in 1938, and Cheng then spent nearly two years refining the singing and acting under the guidance of Wang Yaoqing. It premiered at the Golden Theatre in Shanghai on 30 April 1940 and ran for twenty-five performances, and it was first staged in Beiping at the Chang'an Theatre in April 1941. On her wedding day the rich girl Xue Xiangling shelters from the rain in a roadside pavilion and gives her jewel-filled purse to a weeping poor bride, Zhao Shouzhen; six years later a flood leaves her a servant in the Lu household, where she finds that the lady of the house is the bride she once helped, and the family is reunited. Every scene has a celebrated aria, and the pavilion scene is the one most widely sung by Cheng-school performers.

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