Huju : traditional opera in modern Shanghai / by Jonathan P.J. Stock.
| Author/creator | Stock, Jonathan P. J., 1963- |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Oxford ; New York : Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, ©2003. |
| Description | viii, 279 pages : illustrations, maps, music ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | A British Academy postdoctoral fellowship monograph British Academy postdoctoral fellowship monograph. ^A419257 |
| Contents | 1. The rise of a local opera form in east China, up to 1920 -- History and characteristics of Chinese opera -- Dongxiang shan'ge folk song -- Ballad-singing 1 -- Huaguxi -- Ballad-singing 2: tanhuang -- Opera singers in early-twentieth-century Shanghai -- 2. Female roles and the rise of actresses, 1915-c. 1950 -- Female performers, female roles, and theoretical perspectives -- Analysis of selected female roles in Shanghai opera -- Female singers and musical sound -- 3. Place and music: local opera in Shanghai, 1912-49 -- Music and place: theoretical perspectives -- Institutionalization -- Cosmopolitanism -- 4. Huju and the politics of revolution, post-1949 -- Huju since 1949: history -- Case studies: critical readings of three modern huju -- 5. Ethnomusicological research in an urban setting -- Investigation, participation, performance: discovering huju in Shanghai -- App. 1. Teaching lineages of singers -- App. 2. Chinese-character song texts -- Names of performers, roles, and selected others -- Titles of dramas and episodes. |
| Abstract | China has over three hundred distinct styles of music drama, from exorcism theatre to farce, historical romance, and shadow puppetry. This study considers one of the newer operatic forms. Established just two centuries ago, huju (Shanghai opera), is renowned for its portrayal of ordinary people, not the emperors, courtesans, and heroes of older forms. Acting and make-up aim for realism rather than symbolism, and stories deal with contemporaneous themes: the struggles of lovers to marry, women's rights after the Communist revolution (1949), and life under the new social order established by Deng Xiaoping's reforms in the 1980s. Music ranges from local folksong to syncretic adoptions of Western popular music. A combination of urban and historical ethnomusicology, the book's findings will engage historians of China and general scholars of music alike. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 256-272) and index. |
| LCCN | 2003277383 |
| ISBN | 0197262732 |