When we think of opera in the West, we might think that it is:

• an elite urban art form
• performed in a luxurious theater
• performed with elaborate stage settings
• sung in unintelligible foreign languages
• based on unfamiliar stories

"Farewell My Concubine"

However, at the turn of the century, Chinese opera was:

• enjoyed by rich and poor, urban and rural, literate and illiterate populations
• performed in boisterous teahouses, private homes, social clubs, temples, and open-air stages
• performed with very few stage props
• sung in regional dialect
• based on well-known stories from history, popular literature, and religion

General Yue Fei