Scalpers worked overtime for New Yorkers eager to see Beijing Opera star Mei Lanfang perform during his one and only American tour in 1930. His “exquisite loveliness in pantomime and costume” must have seemed ineffably exotic to New Yorkers, unfamiliar with the codes of Chinese opera, or the art of female impersonators 旦（dan）like Mei. An elaborate and many layered tradition lay behind the performance of Mei and Beijing Opera of the 20th and 21st centuries. In Staging for the Emperors, Liana Chen, a professor at George Washington University, undertakes to explain the emergence of this art form, and surprisingly for this reviewer, to demonstrate the prominent role played by the imperial Qing rulers themselves.
All the world’s a stage and nowhere was that truer than in the Forbidden City, where the emperors were simultaneously spectators and objects of observation. Opera was seen as indissociable from the rites over which they were destined to preside. As early as the Han dynasty, the court had an official music bureau. Shortly after coming to power the Manchu conquerors re-established their own music bureau and inaugurated a repertory of operas on both private and public occasions, including birthdays, festivals, and the arrival of embassies.
The new dynasty had a wealth of musical and dramatic repertories from which to draw on. Though regretting that they could not restore the prestige of Tang dynasty music, they eagerly recruited musicians and singers from the highbrow schools, especially the Kunqu school of Suzhou. During his famous southern tour, the Kangxi Emperor found opportunities to listen to operas and invite the performers to Beijing. Wealthy merchants, eager to cultivate guangxi with the new rulers, donated gorgeous costumes, stage sets and even supplied young boys and girls to the court’s music bureau.
The production values of the court bureau were stupendous. As Richard Wagner noted in his “Music and Art”, opera is a total art, involving poetry, music, singing, dancing, stage illusions and costumes. The Qing added juggling, sword-fighting and acrobatics. They enjoyed folk performances from Mongolia, Korea, Tibet, and Burma, added as intermezzos. The three-storied stages in the Forbidden City offered the emperor the spectacle of divinities on the top floor, Daoist immortals on the middle level and ordinary people on the ground floor. Trap doors and suspended wires allowed actors to disappear into hell or ascend to heaven. Even foreign visitors to the court, who could not understand Chinese, were impressed by the staging, which surpassed even the elaborate baroque theatre of Europe.
The very luxury of these performances, which often lasted over a week, gave the Qing rulers pause. They wanted to distinguish themselves from the fun-loving, later Ming whom they had overthrown. They tried to ban operas that were too violent or too erotic, and patronize the higher-brow genres. They banned operas in dialect. Periodically they issued orders to reduce expenses, to fire actors, and to bring production in house with trained palace eunuchs. They also seem to have been reluctant to use female performers. Women of the palace of course could not perform, and there was something louche about employing women of the city. So, eunuchs got key female parts and the “Dan” character came to the fore.
The Dowager empress Cixi was the last great patron of the palace theatre. An opera maniac, she studied all aspects of production and creation, drilling the palace eunuchs herself in stagecraft. As the 19th century progressed, the court deemphasized the ritual role of the theatre. Out went the massive spectacles and in came theatre for private amusement. Cixi’s tastes and interest in the craft of acting shaped the styles of acting that now characterize Jingju, what foreigners call Beijing Opera.
Chen’s recreation of the Qing theatre is based on extensive research, reflecting the wealth of materials. Many original scores with detailed staging, as well as purchase orders, production notes and memoirs of the period survived the downfall of the dynasty in 1912 and made their way into archival collections and Chinese publications. Her narrative is lively, and by and large free of the theoretical language that makes American academic writing sometimes difficult to follow. She makes her point well, that the Qing stage was as much about how the Qing wanted to be seen as what they wanted to watch. Lovers of Chinese opera as well as those interested in China’s early modern history will find much to stimulate them in this book.
Although the dynasty’s rule ended in 1912, the imperial family continued to live in the Forbidden City until 1923. Just before the last emperor Pu Yi left the city, he watched a performance of the classic piece, the Peony Pavilion. The Dan role was played by Mei Fanlang. So, the arc of history curves from Beijing to Broadway, and back.
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