Sit Kok Sin
薛覺先
(1904–1956)
Completed studies in 1919 - Maestro of Cantonese Opera
1919年肄業 — 薛腔粵劇鬼才
Born in Shunde in 1904, Sit Kok Sin was a maestro of Cantonese opera. He enrolled at St. Paul’s College in 1916. His father’s death in 1918 forced him to drop out in 1919; Sit worked at a pharmacist’s to make ends meet.
When Sit was eighteen, he began his theatrical apprenticeship. By the age of twenty, Sit was already playing lead female roles. He went to Shanghai in 1925, absorbing northern performance art influences. In 1929, Sit founded the Kok Sin Sing Opera Troupe in Guangzhou. There, Sit reformed Cantonese opera in earnest, ridding it of outdated practices, developing his eponymous vocal style, and introducing new norms in make-up and stagecraft. Consequently, Cantonese opera grew to become a favourite form of entertainment in mid-to-late twentieth-century southern China; Sit’s legacy on Cantonese opera in the south is often compared to Mei Lanfang’s on Peking opera in the north. His output includes classics such as Time to Go Home, Marriage Made in Heaven, and My Kingdom for a Husband.
Keenly aware of changing times, Sit was active in movie productions, starring in the Cantonese talkie The White Gold Dragon (1933), bringing the theatrical art form to the silver screen. Sit was also politically minded: he was active in the May Fourth Movement, and raised funds for Chinese troops and victims after the Mukden Incident (1931) and after Guangzhou fell (1938). Sit’s final years also saw him serve the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Sit’s disciples went on to become the art form’s biggest stars, including Bak Sheut Sin and Lam Kar Sing.