Chinatown Opera Theater in North America by Nancy Yunhwa Rao (review)

The first significant wave of immigration to North America from southern China came in the mid-nineteenth century. Among these immigrants were performers of Cantonese opera, a major form of traditional theatre (xiqu) that surfaced in the southern province of Guangdong sometime in the thirteenth century. As early as 1852, performances were being given by full troupes in San Francisco. As a form that expressed a particular Chinese regional identity and connected first-wave immigrants with the culture of their homeland, Cantonese opera became an important part of Chinese diasporic culture. Chinese immigration was not without its critics, of course, and the belief that Chinese were monopolizing the labor force led to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943), a law that severely curtailed immigration from China. Focusing on the so-called golden age of Cantonese opera in the 1920s, Rao’s engaging study documents how the Chinese Exclusion Act weighed down upon immigrant cultural history. Drawing upon a mixture of archival research and ethnomusicology, Rao does not offer a narrative of obdurate victimhood; rather, her study convincingly demonstrates how Cantonese opera was produced through triumph, empowerment, creativity, personal resolve, and collective resourcefulness.

After an introduction, the book’s twelve chapters are divided into five parts. The first articulates the transnational networks that constituted Cantonese opera performance in North America. Some may be aware of Cantonese opera in San Francisco or Los Angeles, but few will recognize Canada, Mexico, or Cuba as important performance hubs. Chapter 1 explores the nature of these transnational circuits, noting how troupes were funded by immigrant success stories. Chapter 2 focuses specifically on the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and its immediate impact on performance practice. As a summary of the contexts that produced the act and the effect it had on performance cultures, this chapter will doubtless prove a useful teaching aid. In chapter 3, Rao demonstrates how Chinese American impresarios accessed legal representation to agitate for actors to be classified as nonimmigrant aliens, enabling them to be admitted to the United States in limited numbers (quotas) under international treaty laws.

Part 2 reconstructs performance practices from available archival materials. Chapter 4 highlights how performances typically drew from the conventional repertoire but were often accompanied by innovative practices that included the development of new plays (many of which engaged with international or domestic US political themes), realistic scenography, and new stage technologies (film projection, special effects, and electric lighting). Rao helpfully connects these developments to mainland Chinese trends (especially in Shanghai) that sought to modernize xiqu in response to Western globalization in the early days of the Republic of China (1911–49). This is important because it connects the diaspora to the aesthetics of the mainland while refuting the lazy construction of Chinese opera as a static form. Chapter 5 deploys a robust ethnomusicological frame to analyze modes of expression in the singing of an aria. The study of performance forms such as Cantonese opera demands interdisciplinarity. If there is a criticism of Rao’s book, it is that specific operas are sometimes reduced to titles and a brief plot summary with little analysis of their theatrical impact. This may arise from the paucity of source material, but part 2 in particular seems weighted toward the analysis of the musical score as the site of expression. Some consideration of the limitations of this approach would have been beneficial, not least because it separates the music from the communicative body in space.

Part 3 documents the transnational relationships between British Columbia and San Francisco. Chapter 6 examines performances in Victoria and Vancouver, noting how new print and audio media enabled access to Cantonese opera outside densely populated areas. Chapter 7 describes how one company moved from Vancouver to San Francisco, changed its name, and established the Great China Theater on Jackson Street in 1924. Chapter 8 argues that the years 1926 to 1928 were a golden period for the Great China Theater, fueled...