In Opera and the City, Andrea Goldman provides a rich history of the diverse forms of opera that ruled the Beijing stage from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Goldman draws upon an impressive range of sources in order to complicate the simplistic “rise and fall” narrative in which Kunqu opera gave way to the nascent forms of Peking Opera. Countering the notion that the popularity of actors specializing in the qinqiang style eclipsed that of Kunqu actors, Goldman notes that through the mid-nineteenth century, many actors were adept in both styles, and Kun operas in fact became part of the repertoire of qinqiang troupes. Goldman demonstrates that yabu (elegant) and huabu (flowery, or more vulgar) opera were labels that were used fluidly, and developed antithetically in order to impose stability on a dynamic situation in which a variety of musical styles were mixed (p. 134). It is in this context that Goldman probes the efforts of the Qing court to suppress the qinqiang style during the last decades of the eighteenth century, examining performance scripts to show that actors actually continued to perform qinqiang by mixing it with other styles. Her textured treatment of the court's interest in huabu follows the trajectory from the initial censure of huabu by the Daoguang emperor to its acceptance by his sons. As Goldman wryly observes, “a musical generation gap existed between the Daoguang Emperor and his sons” (p. 135).

The initial chapter on mid to late Qing connoisseur's guides to actors (huapu, flower catalogues) benefits from Goldman's knowledge of the literary tradition. The huapu have often been mined for historical information regarding actors and the stage, but Goldman's concern is the values of the literati authors who wrote the huapu, and she reads these guides to actors in the context of the urban memoir as well as the long tradition of evaluative writings on actors and actresses. Goldman sees the huapu writer's indulgence in the language of the recluse and the eccentric as compensatory for lack of success in officialdom, and suggests that the huapu were key to the formation of a community of opera connoisseurs in mid to late Qing Beijing. Their praise of a subtle aesthetic that valued restraint distinguished their values from those of the hoi polloi.

The next two chapters are devoted to the urban history of the theater, examining venues as well as the struggle of the court to control commercial opera. Goldman notes that the early Qing state frowned upon the lavish expenditure on privately held troupes characteristic of the late Ming, and this contributed to the success of professional troupes and commercial playhouses. This analysis is paired with a valuable description of the various arenas for viewing theater in mid to late Qing Beijing: the playhouse, the temple, the salon-style performance (this is Goldman's term, and now has gained wide currency), and imperially sponsored spectacles (which Goldman treats as a subcategory of salon-style performance). The detailed section on the temple fair is extremely valuable in that although the temple fair was actually the least exclusive of venues, the site where women and the urban poor were most likely to view opera, it has received short shrift in previous histories.

The latter part of the book examines multiple performance scripts held in libraries in China, Japan, and the United States of two operas, Feicui yuan (The garden of turquoise and jade) and Saozi wo (I, sister-in-law). Analyzing scripts hand copied by actors, Goldman reveals how plays in performance might have differed from literary versions. In this highly original examination of little-known performance scripts, Goldman describes which scenes were typically performed, how dialogue was embellished by the actors, and which characters become central in the performance tradition. Tellingly, performance texts often featured tragic and highly sentimental conclusions that ignored the didacticism that characterized literary versions. Goldman shows that audiences actually did not prefer happy endings, nor were they particularly concerned with the ultimate restoration of social order that is a feature of the literary versions of these operas. Goldman's witty translations invariably inspire admiration. In the coda, Goldman addresses the conventional formulation that the Qing state furnished an affirmation of orthodoxy after the laxity of the Ming.

Goldman's new analysis of the late eighteenth-century antecedents of Peking opera comes on the heels of a renaissance in Chinese scholarship on Peking opera. Given the depth of the secondary literature in Chinese and the interdisciplinary reach of this study, Goldman needed to synthesize a great deal of highly technical information, and her command over the material as well as the compelling quality of the narrative inspire admiration. The winner of the Levenson Prize for the best book written in the field of premodern Chinese studies in 2014, this is a work of mature scholarship whose depth and perspective reflect Goldman's experience and erudition.