Music, especially that of the all-pervasive model operas, formed the backbone of China's revolutionary culture during its tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) (Clark, Pang, and Tsai Reference Peter, Pang and Tsai2016, pp. 1–2). While Western-language scholarship on these wonders of state-directed creativity began appearing contemporaneously with the Revolution (e.g. Yang Reference Yang Daniel1969), the last decade or so has seen an uptick in the publication of significant book-length works. This is due in part to the increased availability of ephemera such as program notes, access to official records, and an openness of individuals to share their experiences in creating these works. Contributing to this expanding body of scholarship is Xing Fan's exemplary volume Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution.
Part of what makes Fan's new book a tremendous resource is the diversity of sources she drew upon in crafting her study. For China-based scholars, researching and publishing on the Cultural Revolution still requires caution and a healthy dose of self-censorship. Nevertheless, an important body of scholarship published in China (and in Chinese) has shed light on various aspects of model Beijing operas (also known as “model modern revolutionary jingju”). Fan's inclusion of findings from these works represents a significant contribution to the English-language literature. Perhaps of even greater value are the perspectives gained from Fan's intensive fieldwork, which she conducted in 2005. Fan lists a total of forty-one interviews with artists who worked on the creative teams that composed model revolutionary operas. It is through conversations with these practitioners that we gain an in-depth understanding of the creative processes that led to the finalized forms of the works memorialized in the films which are still available today. Her interviewees range in expertise from the singing-actors who created leading roles to chief costume designers. In the realm of music, Fan shares the experiences of musicians who composed the scores that took jingju in entirely new directions through the incorporation of instruments from the Western symphony orchestra and through the use of previously unexplored musical textures (such as vertical harmony and triple meter). She shares insights from several of the leading artists who were charged with conducting the large and (then) radically new accompanying ensembles. It should be noted that many of the innovations developed during these years of experimentation still provide a foundation for a good deal of the music heard in newly composed jingju. Therefore, Fan's work not only gives insight into the details of how revolutionary jingju was conceived and created, but also provides an important link between our understanding of its traditional (i.e., pre-1949) music and the modes of music making that dominant contemporary jingju composition.
Our grasp of traditional jingju's musical system, and the English-language terminology used to name its elements, comes from Elizabeth Wichmann's ground-breaking Reference Wichmann1991 treatise Listening to Theatre: The Aural Dimension of Beijing Opera. When as a doctoral student Wichmann travelled to China in 1979, she originally planned to write about model jingju. However, she quickly discovered that discussion of the Cultural Revolution (which Deng Xiaoping would soon term “the ten lost years”) and its artistic legacy had become taboo. It is especially satisfying to see Wichmann's PhD advisee Xing Fan take up the subject, which was unavailable to her teacher, and write about it in such detailed and cogent fashion. All of Fan's interviews took place in 2005 at a time of relative freedom in China for researchers and subjects alike. One can only wonder if her consultants would feel as comfortable today discussing their activities as they did then. Furthermore, many of them must now be in their late seventies or older. For these reasons, we can be grateful that Fan recorded this invaluable historical data when she did. Timing can be everything.
To fulfill her stated goal of “contextualizing model jingju at the intersection of history, artistry, and aesthetics” (p. 8), Fan divides her book into two parts. The first part of the book traces the Chinese Communist Party's cultural policies and interactions with jingju from the Yan'an period (1935–1947) through to the end of the Cultural Revolution. Chapter 1 “Jingju at Yan'an” reveals discrepancies between the CCP's official narrative and other sources, such as personal memoirs, with regards to artistic production in these early years of experimentation. As it turns out, the number of traditional jingju performances staged in Yan'an surpassed those of newly-written historical plays by a margin of more than seven to one. Despite this, two new works created at Yan'an, Driven to Join the Liang Mountain Rebels and Three Raids at the Zhu's Village, are typically touted in official discourse (and in the works of scholars who rely on those accounts) as being representative of the cultural life in the Communist base. Chapter 2 details the CCP's program, which lasted more or less from late 1948 to 1956, for the reform of xiqu (i.e., Chinese opera). As part of the reform, political control of jingju and other forms of xiqu was institutionalized. “Modern Jingju in Years of Uncertainty,” Chapter 3, shows that between 1956 and late 1963 – a turbulent period of rapidly shifting political campaigns – the CCP's xiqu policies were also in constant flux. Tensions formed between camps invested in reforming the traditional repertoire and those that advocated for creating modern works. As part of her analysis, Fan details the policy concerns and artistic innovations involved in the creation of one of the period's most successful works, the White-Haired Girl. Chapter 4, “Model Jingju as Pinnacle of Cultural Reconstruction,” gives a succinct historical overview of the policy debates that took jingju as a medium through which warring political factions – primarily Mao and Jiang Qing, and their party rivals – battled for supremacy. In giving a sense of how these debates influenced artistic production, Fan outlines the general processes of creating and revising model jingju. A ten-page-long comparative chart shows the major changes to Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (which is arguably one of the most successful of the model jingju) over the course of its five revisions spanning from 1958 to 1970.
The five chapters of Part Two, “Inside Model Jingju,” focus on model jingju's five primary components: scripts and playwriting (Chapter 5), acting (Chapter 6), music composition and performance (Chapter 7), the visual elements of stage, lighting, costume, and makeup designing (Chapter 8), and stage directing (Chapter 9). It is in these chapters where Fan's ethnographic work with artists gives us previously unavailable insights into the working processes central to the creation of these vital works which dominated life in China for a decade. How did artists take Maoist policies as interpreted by Jiang Qing and her allies and turn them into living, breathing, sung and danced musical narratives? Her own analyses, informed by practitioners’ first-hand knowledge, is supplemented with drawings of stage floor and scenery plans as well as the blocking for the masterful group skiing dance from Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. There are a few snippets of musical notation, including several themes from Azalea Mountain. Unfortunately, the most extended passage, Granny Li's “Recounting of the family's revolutionary history” from scene 5 of The Red Lantern, is unusable due to its lack of lyrics and lack of indication of which parts are sung and which are instrumental interludes. This is regrettable, particularly since Fan's verbal analysis of this scene's music is excellent. It would also have been worthwhile for the author to have included urls to both YouTube and Youku links to the scene so that readers could hear and see it for themselves. These are minor blemishes, however, in this volume, which is a most welcome contribution to the literature on the ten revolutionary Beijing operas of the Cultural Revolution.
