Tang Ti-sheng

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Tang Ti-sheng

Tang Ti-sheng (Traditional Chinese: 唐滌生) (June 18, 1917 - September 15, 1959), born Tang Kang-Nian (Traditional Chinese: 唐康年), was a Cantonese opera playwright, scriptwriter, and film director. His contributions to Cantonese opera significantly influenced Hong Kong's reform and development of the genre beginning at the late 1930's. During his twenty years career, Tang composed over 400 operas and achieved immense popularity among the Cantonese opera scene. He also wrote the film scripts adapted from his own operas, directed the movies and at times acted in them himself. A few of his most famous works include Bird at Sunset (落霞孤騖), Red Tears of an Aspen (白楊紅淚), Sweet Dreams (花都綺夢), and his last piece The Reincarnation of Lady Plum Blossom (再世紅梅記).

[edit] Biography

Tang was born in Heilongjiang province. Upon graduating from the Guangdong Sun Yat-sen Memorial Middle School, Tang reportedly attended the Shanghai Fine Arts School and also the Shanghai Baptist College. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tang fled south to Hong Kong in 1937 where he joined the Kok Sin Sing Opera Troupe (覺先聲粵劇團) led by his cousin in-law and one of the "Four Super Stars" Sit Kok Sin (薛覺先). Tang worked as a copyist and assistant to Fung Chi-fen (馮志芬) and Nam Hoi Sup-sam Long (南海十三郎), two famous writers for the troupe.

With the encouragement of Sit Kok Sin, Tang began his career as a playwright in 1938 with his first opera The Consoling Lotus of Jiangcheng (江城解語花). Throughout the next twenty years Tang wrote a total of 446 opera scripts, while 80 of those were adapted to movies. He also directed nine films himself, and acted in four of them.