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.
"Raising provocative arguments for discussion is one of the most important things an historical monograph can do, and when, as in Goldman's book, it is combined with deep erudition and empirical richness, it is an occasion to celebrate. Opera and the City is truly a work that not only scholars of Chinese literature but those of late imperial urban society and culture will certainly want to read."
Frontiers of History in China
"Goldman offers a lively, stimulating account of the complex interaction between opera and urban culture in China between 1770 and 1900. This period tends to be underrepresented in scholarship, due to the difficulty of positioning what was innovative and socially challenging within the traditions of Qing society, but the author approaches these issues with wit and precision, and expertly reveals t
CHOICE
"This thoroughly researched and erudite study turns the history of Chinese opera, often treated elsewhere as an esoteric subject, into a key venue for broad social and cultural inquiry into the evolution of Chinese urban politics and culture in the second half of the Qing era . . . This book's major strengths are Andrea Goldman's highly original interpretive vision and her extensive primary-text s
