Operatic China

Operatic China PDF Author: D. Lei
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137061634
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In this study Lei focuses on the notion of 'performing Chinese' in traditional opera in the 'contact zones', where two or more cultures, ethnicities, and/or ideologies meet and clash. This work seeks to create discourse among theatre and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and transnational and diasporic studies.

Operatic China

Operatic China PDF Author: D. Lei
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137061634
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
In this study Lei focuses on the notion of 'performing Chinese' in traditional opera in the 'contact zones', where two or more cultures, ethnicities, and/or ideologies meet and clash. This work seeks to create discourse among theatre and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and transnational and diasporic studies.

Opera, Society, and Politics in Modern China

Opera, Society, and Politics in Modern China PDF Author: Hsiao-t'i Li
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684171016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
"Popular operas in late imperial China were a major part of daily entertainment, and were also important for transmitting knowledge of Chinese culture and values. In the twentieth century, however, Chinese operas went through significant changes. During the first four decades of the 1900s, led by Xin Wutai (New Stage) of Shanghai and Yisushe of Xi’an, theaters all over China experimented with both stage and scripts to present bold new plays centering on social reform. Operas became closely intertwined with social and political issues. This trend toward “politicization” was to become the most dominant theme of Chinese opera from the 1930s to the 1970s, when ideology-laden political plays reflected a radical revolutionary agenda.Drawing upon a rich array of primary sources, this book focuses on the reformed operas staged in Shanghai and Xi’an. By presenting extensive information on both traditional/imperial China and revolutionary/Communist China, it reveals the implications of these “modern” operatic experiences and the changing features of Chinese operas throughout the past five centuries. Although the different genres of opera were watched by audiences from all walks of life, the foundations for opera’s omnipresence completely changed over time."

Chinese Opera

Chinese Opera PDF Author: Peter Lovrick
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774844450
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Chinese Opera looks at Chinese society through an exciting series of photographs of operatic performances from many regions of the country. The book introduces the reader to this unique theatrical form and tells the traditional stories that are its narrative foundation. Siu Wang-Ngai's extraordinary images, taken in natural light during performances, lovingly reveal the visual excitement of Chinese opera and point to the differences in costuming and presentation that distinguish each regional style and character type.

John Adams's Nixon in China

John Adams's Nixon in China PDF Author: Professor Timothy A Johnson
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409494756
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
John Adams's opera, Nixon in China, is one of the most frequently performed operas in the contemporary literature. Timothy A. Johnson illuminates the opera and enhances listeners' and scholars' appreciation for this landmark work. This music-analytical guide presents a detailed, in-depth analysis of the music tied to historical and political contexts. The opera captures an important moment in history and in international relations, and a close study of it from an interdisciplinary perspective provides fresh, compelling insights about the opera. The music analysis takes a neo-Riemannian approach to harmony and to large-scale harmonic connections. Musical metaphors drawn between harmonies and their dramatic contexts enrich this approach. Motivic analysis reveals interweaving associations between the characters, based on melodic content. Analysis of rhythm and meter focuses on Adams's frequent use of grouping and displacement dissonances to propel the music forward or to illustrate the libretto. The book shows how the historical depiction in the opera is accurate, yet enriched by this operatic adaptation. The language of the opera is true to its source, but more evocative than the words spoken in 1972-due to Alice Goodman's marvelous, poetic libretto. And the music transcends its repetitive shell to become a hierarchically-rich and musically-compelling achievement.

Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera

Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera PDF Author: Siu Leung Li
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622096034
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The enchantment of the figure of the "male dan" – female impersonator – remains a residual element in the cultural imagination of many contemporary Chinese societies. The various kinds of interpretive possibilities in the commanding tradition of cross-dressing Chinese opera have yet to be examined in-depth. In order to discuss "mistaken identity" and gender issues as they relate to cross-dressing on the Chinese operatic stage, this book examines a wide range of materials, including traditional dramatic texts, modern literary writings, critical writings (for example, quhua), opera paintings, and contemporary movies. The book explores gendering and gender differences that are constructed, reproduced, dismantled, and contested in this particularly rich site of Chinese culture.

Chinese Street Opera in Singapore

Chinese Street Opera in Singapore PDF Author: Tong Soon Lee
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252055896
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Since Singapore declared independence from Malaysia in 1965, Chinese street opera has played a significant role in defining Singaporean identity. Carefully tracing the history of amateur and professional performances in Singapore, Tong Soon Lee reflects on the role of street performance in fostering cultural nationalism and entrepreneurship. He explains that the government welcomes Chinese street opera performances because they combine tradition and modernism and promote a national culture that brings together Singapore's four main ethnic groups--Eurasian, Malay, Chinese, and South Asian. Chinese Street Opera in Singapore documents the ways in which this politically motivated art form continues to be influenced and transformed by Singaporean politics, ideology, and context in the twenty-first century. By performing Chinese street opera, amateur troupes preserve their rich heritage, underscoring the Confucian mind-set that a learned person engages in the arts for moral and unselfish purposes. Educated performers also control behavior, emotions, and values. They are creative and innovative, and their use of new technologies indicates a modern, entrepreneurial spirit. Their performances bring together diverse ethnic groups to watch and perform, Lee argues, while also encouraging a national attitude focused on both remembering the past and preparing for the future in Singapore.

Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization

Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization PDF Author: D. Lei
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230300421
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Bringing the study of Chinese theatre into the 21st-century, Lei discusses ways in which traditional art can survive and thrive in the age of modernization and globalization. Building on her previous work, this new book focuses on various forms of Chinese 'opera' in locations around the Pacific Rim, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and California.

Performing Images

Performing Images PDF Author: Judith T. Zeitlin
Publisher: Smart Museum of Art, the University of C
ISBN: 9780935573558
Category : Art and society
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Writing in the early nineteenth century, the French traveler and cleric Abbé Huc exclaimed: "There is, perhaps, not a people in the world who carry so far their taste and passion for theatrical entertainments as the Chinese.” This taste and passion for the theater was not restricted to the stage, but permeated the visual and material world of everyday life from the village to the court. The visual spectacle of this theater is well known, displayed primarily through colorful costumes, props, and face painting. What is less known is the extent to which operatic characters and stories were favored as pictorial and decorative motifs across the full spectrum of visual mediums, from courtly scroll paintings, popular New Year prints, illustrated woodblock books and painted fans to carved utensils, ceramics, textiles, and dioramas.

Opera and the City

Opera and the City PDF Author: Andrea Goldman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782628
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
In late imperial China, opera transmitted ideas across the social hierarchy about the self, family, society, and politics. Beijing attracted a diverse array of opera genres and audiences and, by extension, served as a hub for the diffusion of cultural values. It is in this context that historian Andrea S. Goldman harnesses opera as a lens through which to examine urban cultural history. Her meticulous yet playful account takes up the multiplicity of opera types that proliferated at the time, exploring them as contested sites through which the Qing court and commercial playhouses negotiated influence and control over the social and moral order. Opera performance blurred lines between public and private life, and offered a stage on which to act out gender and class transgressions. This work illuminates how the state and various urban constituencies manipulated opera to their own ends, and sheds light on empire-wide transformations underway at the time.

The Operatic State

The Operatic State PDF Author: Ruth Bereson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134469942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
The Operatic State examines the cultural, financial, and political investments that have gone into the maintenance of opera and opera houses in Europe, the USA and Australia. It analyses opera's nearly immutable form throughout wars, revolutions, and vast social changes throughout the world. Bereson argues that by legitimising the power of the state through universally recognised ceremonial ritual, opera enjoys a privileged status across three continents, often to the detriment of popular and indigenous art forms.