When traditional opera meets webcast "I've been acting for 45 years. According to more than 100 shows and 2000 viewers per show every year, I've had more than 10 million viewers in 45 years. But more than 200 million people watched in more than two months of my live broadcast, which is worth my whole life." When traditional opera entered the live broadcasting room, a shocked opera man said. Two years ago, after 60, Li Shujian tried to broadcast live for the first time: debugging the equipment and checking the process... The "powerful" Henan Opera player on the opera stage carefully adjusted his clothes before broadcasting. In the next nearly four hours, he became both an actor and a host. He had to sing, read and play in front of the screen, connect with the Internet talent from time to time, and didn't forget to interact with the audience. Although he has long heard about the communication ability of the network, he was shocked by the 1.75 million viewing volume, which also strengthened his determination to do live drama broadcasting. As an art that has been flowing in the spiritual blood of the Chinese people, traditional opera has changed with the times and the trend, but its inheritance is continuous. The ancient opera tune has spanned thousands of years. Now, with the help of internet live broadcasting technology, it has broken through the boundaries of space and ushered in "another spring in the pear garden". According to the live broadcast data report of opera released by a platform in 2022, opera is showing new vitality through live broadcast: 231 kinds of opera have opened live broadcast. In the past year, they have conducted more than 800000 live broadcast of opera, with a total of more than 2.5 billion viewers. Each live drama is equivalent to a medium-sized performance. Similarly, in the 2020 statistics released by another network platform that tried live drama earlier, Peking Opera is the short video type of intangible cultural heritage drama with the largest number of authors and audiences. Platform users' favorite types of intangible cultural heritage drama include Qin opera, Yuediao, Huangmei Opera, Henan opera, Luantan, Er Ren Tai, Sichuan Opera, Yue opera, Jin opera, etc. In the live broadcast room, we can not only see that Wang Shanpu, a performing artist of Henan Opera in his 90s, plays with classic excerpts, but also see that many young opera actors of the post-90s generation show solid professional skills. Audiences only need to pick up their mobile phones to enjoy Beijing opera, Henan opera, Kunqu Opera, Qin opera and other operas. Traditional opera is living in the live broadcasting room. Leveraging: traditional art with the wind of science and technology Since 2020, the traditional opera industry has been struggling under the repeated impact of the COVID-19. In the cold winter of performance, the offline performances of most troupes become less, and the income of opera actors in grass-roots troupes is difficult to be guaranteed. "You can't let actors sing on an empty stomach." Li Shujian said. Through the live broadcast, the audience agreed with the opera actors in the way of reward, and the performance won the "new theater ticket" in the Internet era. At present, the live broadcast income has become the third source of income of the troupe in addition to government funding and outdoor performances. Opera actors also received additional performance income through online live performance, which alleviated the pressure of life. The changes brought about by the epidemic also fall on opera fans. Ms. song, a post-80s opera fan, watches more than 50 opera performances in the theater every year. "Now many performances have been postponed or cancelled. If you can't see the performance, you feel empty". The live broadcast of opera is like a dawn for her. After seeing the live broadcast of Huangmei Opera actor Wu Qiong on the Internet, she sighed: "it's worthy of a golden voice! It doesn't mess up for more than two hours. It's very thirsty and enjoyable." One side was the notice of successive postponements of the performance, and the other was the worry and urging of old fans. Zhou meihui, a Tsing Yi actor from Beijing Peking Opera Theater, decided to join the live broadcast. Starting at 8 p.m. and ending before 12 p.m., she spent more than three hours chatting, singing and sharing her knowledge and understanding with her fans. In order to prepare for the performance of Beijing Opera Liang Hongyu, she dared not waste her skills. She practiced drums and broadcast live. Zhou meihui lamented that the stage is very important for the morale of opera actors. If they can't go on stage during the epidemic prevention and control period, they will have a lot of opportunities for performance practice. With the help of the new form, the stage can be widened and the actors can take the stage. Opera people have found the contact point of performance and communication and the balance point between art and reality on the Internet. In this regard, Li Shujian also said: "to some extent, the audience in the live studio is equal to the audience in the theater, the praise in the live studio is equal to applause, and the message comments in the live studio are equal to the questionnaire in the past." Back feeding: a long opera cavity to build a clear and bright space The live broadcast not only finds an outlet for the temporarily troubled real life of opera people, but also finds a new entrance for artistic inheritance and performance practice. Taking advantage of the wind of science and technology, more opera actors began to take the initiative and make efforts to adapt to the new communication form. After several live broadcasts, Li Shujian summed up two key points of new media communication - entertainment and ideology. Entertainment means taking the initiative to adapt to new performance scenes. Without the interval of the "fourth wall" and the dependence of the opera program, the opera actors "fight hand in hand" with the audience in the live broadcasting room and interact in an all-round way. The audience's feedback is most directly presented through numbers, which is a great challenge for the opera actors. "Most of the people who play the Internet are young people. They are fast-paced. They have to change the past thinking of what I play and what you see, and become what you see and what I play." In order to attract more audiences, he made the live broadcast into a special party, inviting old artists and excellent young actors to participate, and connecting with Internet talent to sing, perform, challenge arena and popularize opera knowledge. At the same time, he told the historical story behind opera and shared his experience of more than 40 years of art. In addition to complying with the communication law and audience characteristics of the new media platform and striving to present more new content inside and outside the theater, Li Shujian also stressed the ideological nature. It is the responsibility and historical mission of opera people to spread excellent opera culture through the Internet. Zhou meihui received a group of young viewers for the live broadcast. The live broadcast made these audiences feel the charm of opera, so when the epidemic improved, they took the initiative to buy tickets and walked into the theater. Her fan group leader is an 18-year-old drama fan. In her daily interaction with fans, she hopes to spread the infiltration and edification of art to a far distance through her own performance and communication. As more and more traditional operas appear in the live broadcasting room, different from the "beauty live broadcasting" that once fought for beauty and showed the lower limit, the live broadcasting of traditional operas is not only spreading the traditional culture, but also improving the ecology of online live broadcasting. For the audience, the melodies, sentimental feelings and simple and straightforward truth in the opera are consistent with the good memories of their hometown in the memory, as well as the simple belief in truth, goodness and beauty. Among opera troupes, the live broadcast of Shanghai Yueju Opera Theater is quite unique. In addition to opening official accounts to broadcast classic plays and theme activities on major video live platforms, Shanghai Yueju Opera theater also opened a live broadcast Salon of "youth · drama talk". The live broadcast of drama creation dialogue, originally initiated by the young creators of Shanghai Yueju opera academy, has developed into a Shanghai Youth Literary and artistic practice across theaters, operas, disciplines and art categories in two or three years. The theme of the salon has also gradually expanded from the initial drama creation to the temperament of operas, performance aesthetics, cross art integration, East-West cultural dialogue Stage and urban culture and other broader topics of stage art and culture. The writers, directors and other members of Shanghai Academy of Arts, art and research, as well as the writers, directors and other members of Shanghai Academy of Arts and art continue to be recruited. "The purpose of planning an academic drama live broadcast is to guide young people to think more deeply. At the same time, we also hope to attract young people with young people and cultivate new audiences. At first, we were worried that academic and theoretical content might not be welcomed by the live audience. Facts have proved that such concerns are superfluous. This project has received enthusiastic response and positive interaction from the audience." Lu Xiang, vice president of Shanghai Yueju opera academy, said. At the same time, major platforms are also actively exploring the live broadcast of drama. The special columns of "summer of Peking Opera", "I'm on stage now" and "great master of opera" have made beneficial attempts in presenting high-quality content. Outlook: upholding integrity and innovation is fundamental "When can I go to the theater?" When the live broadcast of opera develops in full swing, you can still see and hear such exclamations in the live broadcast room. The "cloud" performance is intoxicating, but the theater is still missed. "Because what we see in the theater is the whole performance, including lighting, sound, dance beauty, protagonists, supporting actors, props, and even every audience is an organic part of the performance." Wang Jingyu, a lecturer at the school of language and communication at Beijing Jiaotong University, pointed out that "it is the wonderful chemical reaction between these elements that has created the charm of opera art that has been spreading for hundreds of years." Where will the spread of traditional Chinese opera go in the future? Most practitioners believe that "making friends online and watching performances offline" can complete the perfect closure of the chain by directing traffic to the theater with the help of the Internet. For fans, online live broadcasting without a complete performance program can only be regarded as an expedient and helpless move when there is no performance to watch. Yang Ruhan, a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of traditional opera, said: "online live broadcasting doesn't feel like sitting in a theater. I hope to capture all kinds of details of the scene with my own eyes. Sometimes watching a play is not just watching a play, but also a literary and artistic activity with social attributes." Zhang Yifan, lecturer of the school of Arts of Renmin University of China and director of the teaching and Research Office of drama and drama, pointed out: "in the process of exploring drama communication, the fragmentation and integrity of drama noumenon are a pair of dialectical relations that cannot be neglected. The advantage of fragmentation is to save time and effort, which is very efficient in the fast pace of modernization, but the purpose of fragmented communication must be to serve the overall communication." Drama cannot always be the "traffic responsibility" in webcast. Zhangyifan said: "the dissemination of opera through various new media can gain attention and harvest traffic, but we should also consider and evaluate how much water the traffic is, whether it will cause false prosperity, and how much the negative impact of the generated foam on practitioners." Some people are more optimistic about this. Ms. song, a drama fan, mentioned in the interview that some time ago, Peking Opera actress Wang Peiyu watched her past performances live with everyone. This form made her refreshing. "For our old fans, listening to the actors share their knowledge and understanding of the performance at that time can get a lot of information outside the audience. For the audience who didn't see the opera very much, having a professional to lead the explanation can also understand the traditional art faster." She believes that for the live broadcast of traditional opera, we might as well have an open and inclusive attitude. Welcoming new technology does not mean abandoning tradition. In the process of development and change, traditional art may produce different forms of flowers. Cultural growth has its internal logic, and communication is only one link. After the live broadcast, opera still has a long way to go in the journey of integrity and innovation. Wang Jingyu said that for opera, webcast only opens a door to approach young people, and to make young people become "iron powder", it ultimately depends on their own artistic charm. The inheritance of excellent traditional culture is continuous, no matter what form