Tang Ti-sheng

Tang Ti-sheng , born Tang Kang-Nian , 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'' , ''Red Tears of an Aspen'' , ''Sweet Dreams'' , and his last piece ''The Reincarnation of Lady Plum Blossom'' .

Biography

Tang was born in Heilongjiang province, northeastern China. 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 led by his cousin in-law and one of the "Four Super Stars" Sit Kok Sin . Tang worked as a copyist and assistant to Fung Chi-fen and Nam Hoi Sup-sam Long , 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'' . 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.