Huju Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai

by Stock, Jonathan P. J.

• ISBN13: 9780197262733
• ISBN10: 0197262732
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-19
• Publisher: British Academy

Summary

Stock's study offers the first book-length account of Huju, a Shanghai operatic tradition which blends music and acting with portrayal of the lives of ordinary people. Richly informed by first-hand accounts, the book follows the genre as it develops in China's largest city from rural entertainment to urban ballad, revolutionary drama, and contemporary opera. An innovative combination of urban and historical ethnomusicology, the book will engage the historian of China and general scholar of music alike.

Author Biography

Jonathan Stock lectures in music at the University of Sheffield where he establishd the ethnomusicology programme, and is past Chairman of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.

Table of Contents

List of maps and figures	ix
Introduction	1	(1)
Vignette in the ethnographic present, or anxious authoring in a self-conscious age	2	(2)
Opera in China: notes on the use of a term	4	(3)
Shanghai opera	7	(3)
Existing research	10	(8)
Research context and conduct	18	(3)
Structure of the book	21	(2)
Shanghai and the Wu dialect	23	(5)
Acknowledgements	28	(2)
The rise of a local opera form in east China, up to 1920	30	(29)
History and characteristics of Chinese opera	30	(3)
Dongxiang shan' ge folk song	33	(5)
Ballad-singing 1	38	(1)
Huaguxi	39	(2)
Ballad-singing 2: tanhuang	41	(5)
Opera singers in early-twentieth-century Shanghai	46	(10)
Conclusions	56	(3)
Female roles and the rise of actresses, 1915--c. 1950	59	(38)
Female performers, female roles, and theoretical perspectives	67	(5)
Analysis of selected female roles in Shanghai opera	72	(14)
Female singers and musical sound	86	(10)
Conclusions	96	(1)
Place and music: local opera in Shanghai, 1912--49	97	(60)
Music and place: theoretical perspectives	100	(5)
Institutionalization	105	(28)
Cosmopolitanism	133	(20)
Conclusions	153	(4)
Huju and the politics of revolution, post-1949	157	(48)
Huju since 1949: history	161	(17)
Case studies: critical readings of three modern huju	178	(25)
Conclusions	203	(2)
Ethnomusicological research in an urban setting	205	(23)
Investigation, participation, performance: discovering huju in Shanghai	209	(14)
Conclusions	223	(2)
Coda	225	(3)
Appendix 1: Teaching lineages of singers	228	(3)
Appendix 2: Chinese-character song texts	231	(5)
Glossary	236	(20)
Names of performers, roles, and selected others	236	(6)
Titles of dramas and episodes	242	(5)
Other terms	247	(9)
Bibliography	256	(17)
Index	273