Ruling the Stage: Social and Cultural History of Opera in Sichuan from the Qing to the People's Republic of China

Through an innovative interdisciplinary reading and field research, Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profound transformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s. He investigates the complex path of opera over this course of history: exiting the temple festivals, becoming a public obsession on commercial stages, and finally being harnessed to partisan propaganda work. The book analyzes the process of cross-regional integration of Chinese culture and the emergence of the national opera genre. Moreover, opera is shown as an example of the culture wars that raged inside China’s popular culture.

Igor Iwo Chabrowski, Ph.D. (2013, EUI) is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. He has previously published Singing on the River: Sichuan Boatmen and Their Work Songs, 1880s – 1930s (Brill, 2015) and journal articles on the histories of China and Thailand.

"Chabrowski’s book is a formidable and highly original addition to the literature on the social organization of traditional Chinese opera from the last years of imperial Qing rule in the 19th century to the impact of Western-style spoken dramas in the years of the Republic (1912–1949), and up to the consolidation of Communist control over the performing arts in the 1950s. Based on dedicated in-depth archival study, the author presents a rich, stimulating and important account of operatic practices and contexts in Sichuan... [T]he great part of the volume is a succession of vibrantly detailed and coherent case studies which will readily inspire other researchers into deepening their understandings of this subject area."
-Jonathan P. J. Stock, University College Cork, The China Quarterly (2023), 1–2