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| (China Daily) |
"I never work myself into the illusion that I'm male so that I can be believable onstage," Mao says. "I'm always a woman playing men. The audience won't be fooled into thinking I'm a man."
As a matter of fact, the audience does not even need to go near the stage to know that. Zhejiang Xiaobaihua Yue Opera Troupe, of which Mao Weitao is president as well as the biggest star, has an all-female cast. And the art form as a whole is predominantly female-oriented, with only a few male performers who were incorporated in the 1980s as an experiment. But it's funny that when Yue Opera first evolved in 1906, the actors were all male, just as in Peking Opera.
Yue is the name of the ancient kingdom that is now Zhejiang province. Yue Opera, previously translated as Shaoxing Opera - perhaps to avoid confusion with Cantonese Opera, which is also pronounced Yue Opera in Mandarin - first flourished in the 1930s when it migrated north to Shanghai.
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