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HUJU: TRADITIONAL OPERA IN MODERN SHANGHAI. By Jonathan Stock. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2003. 279 pp. $ 59.90 (hardcover).
In Huju: Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai, Jonathan Stock examines the history and music of huju (Shanghai opera) based on his fieldwork in Shanghai and on Chinese language scholarship. He uses this research to evaluate ethnomusicological methodology, as ethnomusicologists are the primary audience for this book. Stock's study of huju seeks to demonstrate the origins of the art in its specific time and place, and to discuss the changes it has undergone in this context, combining musical and sociohistorical dimensions. Stock's critical analysis of the genre, which has not yet received much academic attention, is a real contribution to the field.
Huju is generally defined as a two-century performing tradition with a rural folk origin and a later life in the city of Shanghai dating from the late nineteenth century. It developed from folk songs to seated balladry, and became full-blown staged opera in the 1920s. But in Stock's analysis, this model inaccurately presents clear-cut stages of development, and excludes the actual overlaps of forms that he tries to demonstrate (pp. 56-57). As a preparation for this critical review and a later comparison of huju with other opera traditions, a brief survey of Chinese opera is offered in the opening chapter to the reader unfamiliar with the topic. Although it is meant to be a general introduction, this section could be more helpful to its reader if more historical context and accurate examples were provided. The survey should start with nanxi (southern drama), the first fully developed theatrical form arising in the twelfth century, instead of zaju (northern drama).
An important change in the huju tradition is the emergence of female singers in the process of its urbanization in the 1910s. How female singers deal with female impersonators' construction of vocal register constitutes a subject for chapter 2. Stock makes an interesting analysis of why the female impersonator used high pitches and cadence emphases to distinguish the female role from the male role in ballad styles and early opera, and explains how this influenced the performance of the later female singer. When actresses began to play female roles, that musical register should have become unnecessary...