This paper deals with the fieldwork on the art and cultural research of Chizhou Nuo Opera, including the rite of Nuo, the spot investigation of Nuo performance, investigation of literature, culture relics and materials handed down orally. Based on the fieldwork materials, this paper integrates musicology, history, folklore, and anthropology into one, and takes the survival environment into account to analyze such artistic features of Nuo Opera as its melodies, gongs and drums (accompaniment and solo), and dance. It also introduces the discussion of both the changes in Chizhou Nuo Opera in social development and the transitional role its melodies have played in the transmission from folk to opera music, in other words, the annotation of the opinion that Nuo opera is the living fossil of Chinese opera music .Furthermore, with the reference of the theories on "divine and worldly" , " the rite and social contract" , cognition, and collective unconsciousness separately initiated by C. Colpe and R. Otto, Durkheim, L.Festinger, and C.G.Jung, the social function and cultural value of Nuo Opera are revealed. Here the author tries to expound that Chizhou Nuo opera is a pan-religious folk belief system, and that it is a spiritual presentation of the peo ple' s actual life. In other words, through the performance of Nuo Opera and its rite, a stable link between the people' s daily life and spiritual home is established so that the imagined community can be built to turn ideal into reality and sufferings to joys. Thus the actual social meaning of Chizhou Nuo Opera is shown. As a whole, only after the art noumenon, social function and cultural property of Chizhou Nuo Opera have been sorted out, can it be sublimated into a social cultural phenomena from the level of opera art, then its value in the modern society be established, and thus its inheritance and development preserved.
【关键词 (中文/英文)】 池州摊戏; 滚唱; 摊戏会; 家族性 Chizhou Nuo Opera; Gunchang; Union of Nuo Opera; Clandestine
