Cantonese Opera in Canada: Cantonese Opera

This book attempts to provide a comprehensive understanding of Cantonese opera. It examines its various names and definitions, characteristics, essences, regional distribution, local and global contexts, influence, historical development, inherent value, and future development prospects. The second last chapter discusses the development of Cantonese opera in North America.

Cantonese opera is one of the grandest of the traditional musical theatres in China. This book investigates the creative process involved in the performance of these operas, in which as many as fifty or sixty singers/actors/dancers and a dozen or more instrumentalists take part. Based on fieldwork in Hong Kong and upon transcription and analysis of the music from live performances, this book investigates this extraordinary performance, focusing on social function, the script, the language and the individual singer's creative input. Bell Yung suggests a model of creative process that involves a set of rules according to which singers operate, improvise and interact. He also considers other theoretical issues, most importantly the relationship between text and music and the question of the variance or invariance of melodies.

The book consists of 18 transcripts of seminars by established performers, musicians, playwrights, and stage managers, as well as one manuscript compiled from a recording of the program "Discussion on Cantonese Opera" on the radio. These 19 articles are divided into five sections, namely,

• Tradition of Cantonese Opera and the Regulation of Opera Troupes
• Performative Arts in Cantonese Opera
• Playwrights Talk About Playwriting
• Cantonese Music and the World of Cantonese Opera Songs
• The Light and Shadow of Cantonese Opera in Hong Kong

This book documents the personal experiences and insights of numerous experienced individuals from the Cantonese opera and Cantonese music industry to portray a comprehensive picture of this traditional art form.

This volume is a compilation of thirty-seven articles presented at the International Seminar on Cantonese Opera, jointly organized by the Centre of Asian Studies of the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Ethnic Music Society. This symposium and the proceedings cover a wide range of strategically developed topics, including the formation, development, and reform of Cantonese opera, as well as its scripts, music, singing styles, costumes, publicity, and performativity. Together, these articles provide an overview of the development of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Singapore. Notably, the research on female and child troupes in Hong Kong Cantonese opera addressed a previously underexplored area, indicating that the study of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong has entered a new stage of development.

This edited volume consists of twelve articles on the theme of fieldwork as a methodology in the studies of Chinese Xiqu. Combining the perspectives of anthropology and ethnomusicology, this work opens up new areas for the studies of Chinese Xiqu. The final article is a report of the fieldwork conducted by Chen and Yung in 1990 of the Cantonese Musical Associations in New York City’s Chinatown, providing a snapshot of the performance context and practice of Cantonese opera and musical activities in New York City.

This bilingual (Chinese and English) work covers not only Cantonese opera costumes, but also its history, make-up and dress-up processes, scripts, music and recent developments. With its excellent print quality, high resolution images and accurate illustrations, this work serves as an interesting and engaging introductory reading to glimpse a deeper understanding of the artistic traditions and history of Cantonese opera.

This book examines alternative Chinese opera in the “Chinese peripheries.” a genre that, according to the author’s definition, includes traditional Chinese theatres adjusted and modified for both local and international audiences. The focus is Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the major Chinese American communities in California. This discussion of Chinese opera in Hong Kong and California shed light on the role of Cantonese opera in battling identity confusion and anxiety, political conflict, cultural ambivalence, and nostalgia in the age of globalization.

In this seminal work, Ng traces the early history of theater activities in Ming-Qing Guangdong, details the urban shift of Cantonese opera to Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the turn of the 20th century, and examines the storm of business downturn from the late 1920s. With this historical context, Ng discusses the intersection of culture and politics by examining the popular theater as a contentious public arena unleashing broader social and cultural change, as well as reflecting the conflicts and chaos in society. Finally, and most interestingly for the study of Cantonese opera in Canada, the author presents a transnational portrait of theater activities in Southeast Asia and North America by tapping into business archives and local sources in Chinatowns in these areas, such as Vancouver.

This book includes a detailed introduction of the Tai Ping Theatre collection and twelve essays studying the rare and valuable artefacts of this collection from an interdisciplinary perspective. The collection, divided up and placed in several depositories in Hong Kong, is a treasure trove filled with “master-apprentice contracts, employment contracts, performance agreements of the Tai Ping Opera Troupe annual reports and business correspondence of the theatre, film studio documents, librettos of the troupes publicity materials …, special issues and newspapers, newspaper clippings, photographs, tickets and opera costumes” (336). In the words of Ng, the historical documents and artifacts in this collection are “unparalleled, for this moment, in sheer quantify and exceedingly rich content” (2015, p. 4).