Huju: Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai (review)

Jonathan Stock's book on huju, an operatic tradition in Shanghai, is the first extended study of this topic to be published in English. The strength of this monograph, however, extends beyond its focus on the musical and social history of huju in modern Shanghai, and Stock has produced a brilliant example of what a monograph in musicology should be: the focus is always on music, be it sound, text, people, performance, or context. With music at the centre, Stock takes his readers on different paths that radiate to different viewpoints, while constantly connecting them back to the music. Each viewpoint constitutes a chapter in the book. Collectively, the five chapters outline a history of huju in twentieth-century Shanghai to embrace broader theoretical and methodological enquiries.

Chapter 1 traces the early development of huju by examining cross-genre relationships between existing musical traditions in East China up to the 1920s, nicely summarized in the two figures on pages 56-7. What I find particularly useful in this chapter is the way Stock distinguishes between 'histories of musical products' and 'analyses of musical practices' in the understanding of how one music genre relates to another, and suggests a revision in the way we think about such relationships in Chinese music (p. 39). To this end, he captures the complex dynamics between different music genres that have contributed to the development of huju beyond their musical interactions, including such factors as performance contexts, types of performers, teaching and learning processes, and funding sources. This chapter is a good example of Stock's ability not only to introduce new music genres to his readers but also to write in such a way that readers can understand these genres through particular theoretical and methodological frameworks. For example, in describing the ballad genre, tanhuang, he examines shifts in music preferences based on a study of individual singers, thus foregrounding the importance of individual practice in the understanding of music cultures.

Chapter 2 explores the impact of female roles in the huju tradition and how the rise of female singers extended the social efficacy of theatre. Stock begins with a prelude on the rise of female performers in Shanghai based on Chinese sources and interviews with performers, and proceeds to introduce theoretical perspectives on the study of female performers. On a first reading, I found this section on the review of theory and literature a little confusing, probably because I am unfamiliar with existing research in this area, and I was still unsure how this would work into my understanding of huju in Shanghai. Any confusion, however, quickly dissipated in the analysis of female singing style that follows as Stock demonstrates a music-centred approach to studying the significance of female performers to the development of this operatic tradition. In the analysis of the play The Prostitute's Tears (pp. 81–5), and in particular of an excerpt sung by Yang Feifei, it is not immediately apparent what Yang Feifei thinks of Stock's analysis of the different modes of emotional expression in her performance. Stock includes information on how a huju fan, Tang Jun, interprets Yang's performance (p. 82), which is an effective approach given his emphasis on the study of music reception to examine changes as a result of the rise of actresses (p. 71). I wonder if including Yang's responses might have strengthened this section, especially since Stock had interviewed Yang on information used earlier in this chapter (p. 63). Nonetheless, this does not detract from the careful analysis and presentation of materials in this chapter.

The next chapter, on the 'social fabrication of musical activity' is an exemplary case study of how music and place are inextricably bound. After a review of the current state of research in this area, Stock examines the effects of new performance spaces on the huju tradition through the use of multiple...