Chabrowski's book is a formidable and highly original addition to the literature on the social organization of traditional Chinese opera from the last years of imperial Qing rule in the 19th century to the impact of Western-style spoken dramas in the years of the Republic (1912–1949), and up to the consolidation of Communist control over the performing arts in the 1950s. Based on dedicated in-depth archival study, the author presents a rich, stimulating and important account of operatic practices and contexts in Sichuan. The book offers significant complementarity to recent studies of operatic culture in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangdong and across the Chinese diaspora.
The study comprises three parts. Part one, “Opera in Qing-era Sichuan,” contextualizes operatic culture in this southwestern region. As Sichuan recovered from devastating conflict during the transition from Ming to Qing rulership, diverse genres of traditional opera became deeply established in the broader society's communal lifeways. Opera productions constructed a sense of history and community, and they shaped economic, hereditary and religious landscapes. Among numerous interesting insights that nuance our historical understanding, Chabrowski's research reveals that local authorities across the province often welcomed opera performance; rather than wishing ban opera, they recognized that the large gatherings it stimulated presented opportunities not only for communal solidarity but also for social and moral transgression. Opera was a keystone of Sichuan society; it therefore demanded careful management.
In part two, Chabrowski looks at the institutionalization and commercialization of opera in the period 1902–1937. Chapter two examines the new relationships between theatre and power that appeared in the reform and Republican periods. Here, the analysis of taxation practices and the symbiotic involvement of urban police forces is particularly fascinating. The author notes that the police needed to keep opera profitable so that they could receive their cut of the earnings in turn: “Because of these sorts of policies, some theatres …weathered all the political, economic, and social storms in the early twentieth century” (p. 94). Chapter three addresses the rise of new spaces for opera in prosperous urban centres (Chongqing is the primary example), as commercial opera increasingly supplanted that performed at religious festivals or events such as the gatherings of clan groupings and regional associations. Chabrowski presents a strong link between the development of a refined genre of Sichuan opera (now often referred to as chuanju) and its proximity in these districts to relatively affluent middle-class audiences (p. 127). He argues that the operatic entertainment market for audiences outside these zones was impoverished. That seems eminently possible, although we might recall that written sources typically provide a far richer picture of elite entertainments than of smaller-scale operatic expressions directed at less wealthy (and less literate) working-class audiences. The second major topic of this chapter concerns the reshaping of actors’ careers in the new commercial theatres, and here there are interesting contrasts and overlaps with the better-known situation in eastern China, where a culture of stardom had asserted itself early in the Republican era. Two case studies, Kang Zhilin (1870–1930) and Fu Sanqian (1866–1950) provide the bulk of the material and take the reader into nuances of personal training, performance style, professional ethos and troupe organization. Part two is completed by chapter four, which focuses on cultural aspects of commercial opera in this period. There's quite some overlap here with themes traced in chapter three, and it might have been clearer to organize one chapter on the switch from operas at religious festivities to those in the new urban commercial theatres, and a second that gathered up all the related material on actors, repertory and performance. Nevertheless, there is a considerable amount of detail, and every reader will pick up on points of interest in this writing. The concluding observation that post-1949 histories tell tales that suit those writing them (elevating the role of spoken dramas and attributing reformist agendas to working class artists, p. 183) is certainly one that matches occurrences elsewhere across China.
Part three assesses the efforts of drama reformists and others in three waves of attempted cultural reform: in the 1920s as local intellectuals picked up on notions of enlightened modernity, as Sichuan became the main base of KMT governance after 1937 and under Communist leadership in the early 1950s. Each of these three chapters (five, six and seven) works well on its own but they are particularly effective as a set that traces common themes across each era, not least intellectual involvement in cultural production and direct governmental control of it. These forces pushed against the commercial independence of the professional opera troupes and large theatres, but not necessarily in unison or effectively.
Overall, this is a powerful and genuinely impressive study. It's not the first book to turn to on the history of opera in modern China – crucially, there's very little sense here of the sonic- or visual-performative components of that set of traditions, of the interplay of speech tone and melody, or of poetics and scripts. Occasionally, I was unpersuaded by some of the theoretical claims: Chabrowski regularly identifies his ideas as offering entirely new theoretical perspectives, but one of these is the insight that operatic history represents a communication of values rather than a chronicle of events. That seems to me highly apposite but also uncontroversial, and the passage is not improved by his drawing in a critique of European concepts of “national history” (pp. 176–177). But such moments are rare; the great part of the volume is a succession of vibrantly detailed and coherent case studies which will readily inspire other researchers into deepening their understandings of this subject area.
