Three Persons and Two Lamps is based on a story in Benshi Poems of Tang Dynasty. As it portrays the sorrows in boudoirs, the focus is certainly the female characters. However, different from the traditional exploration of the sorrows in boudoirs, the women in the opera are not ladies who wait at home for their husbands to pass the official examination to become officials, but a group of chamber maids who devote their youths and beauty to serve in the palace. If only they could wait for the day when they would be favored by the emperor to come! However, it is never easy to be even seen by the emperor. The setting of Three Persons and Two Lamps is the chambers in the palace where women outnumber men to the extreme. Thus it can portray the friendship and comradeship among women, and even the entanglement of love.
Focusing on the gender issue, this opera can be viewed as a vanguard in traditional Chinese Opera. But after a second thought, it is easy to see that the playwright mainly focus on “love” among human beings. Guangzhi and Shuangyue leave their homes to enter the palace, and they become comrades and friends who spend all the time together. Gradually they become dependant of each other. Though their feelings toward each other is beyond the simple definition of friendship, comradeship, or love, the feelings deep in their hearts are truly moving.
The music in the opera consists not merely the basic tune of xi-pi-er-huang, but also tunes of Kunqui and other local operas. For example, when the characters chant some poems, or when Consort Meifei sings in the tune of Kunqui, it presents a feeling of emptiness and forlorn and shows the deep sorrows in the heart of the character. Another example is seen when Xiangqi remembers the time when she left home by singing some local ditties. Different from the serious tunes sung in the palace, these ditties can clearly convey the lively scenes in the farming village and the reluctant feeling of those who are forced to send their daughters to the palace because of poverty.
