Featured on PDR in the collection Peking Opera Characters (ca. 1900)

Of the approximately 360 kinds of theater in China, Peking opera remains the most infamous. Originating in Shanghai rather than Beijing, the style is thought to have become formalized sometime between 1790 and 1860. And yet, the neatness of the English term “Peking opera” masks the historical difficulty of delineating its canon. As Joshua Goldstein observes, the artform has three Chinese names (jingju, jingxi, and pingju) and points to a patchwork genre that includes “several dozen melodic themes otherwise known collectively as pihuang”. Patronized by the Qing court in its infancy, Peking opera was performed by troupes that could include more than a hundred people, from stagehands and musicians to costumers and actors, in order to put on six to ten hours of scenes per…