[
    {
        "id": 206138,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 218,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n211\n\nto a local princess. Fifteen years later he hears that his mother and several members of his family are guarding the Chinese border very close to where he is. When the play starts, he is longing to see his own people again, and his wife, the princess, makes him admit the reason for his sadness to her and also his identity. She agrees to help him to get out of the barbarian camp on condition that he comes back the next day. The most dramatic moment of the play is the brief encounter between Ssu Lang and his mother and his first Chinese wife. However, he keeps his word and returns.\n\nThe second play is a farce. The philosopher Chuang Tzu tests his wife. He pretends to be dead and reappears under the form of a young handsome scholar. He seduces his wife and even persuades her to break open the coffin in which her husband lies to remove his heart to make a medicine for him. However, when the wife opens the coffin, the philosopher reappears and confounds her. She commits suicide from shame.\n\nBesides the translations, the book also includes a general introduction to Chinese opera, some photographs of scenes from the two plays, detailed explanations of extracts from Ssu Lang visits his mother (the latter have been recorded on tape and are available from the publisher), a glossary of Chinese theatre terms and an index.\n\nBy choosing these two plays, the author has presented nearly all the different kinds of Chinese opera characters (only the painted faces are not represented). Both plays are very well known and often played; for example here in Hong Kong, by the Chun Chau Peking Opera School in Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park. Ssu Lang visits his mother was, moreover, played two months ago in the City Hall by a group of amateurs; and famous airs from this opera are as well known to the Chinese as are the famous airs of Verdi to Italians. The background explanation is an excellent summing-up of what must be known in order to enjoy a Chinese opera; and if one wants to know more, one can read the Chinese Classical Theatre by the same author. This earlier book speaks in generalities, but here A. C. Scott gives two precise examples and shows how the principles of Chinese operas work in a given play.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211797,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1989",
        "page_number": 212,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "187\n\nless than sixteen of his farces were staged during the years 1850-1865, including of course the maligned Box and Cox which is, ironically, nearly his only piece that is still occasionally seen today. Closely following were the burlesques of Henry James Byron, written in quite a different style from Morton's farces, with many more puns in the text which makes them sometimes awkward reading, although one can feel amazement about the author's inventiveness. Yet, to see well-established works like Verdi's Il Trovatore, with its beautiful music, mangled into !!! Treated Il Trovatore, or Shakespeare's Macbeth and King John into The Babes in the Wood makes one feel a little bit queasy. Of especial interest to the Shanghai residents must have been his Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp for he had built the entire action **around puns on China tea and he invented widow Twankay as a pun on one of the ports central to the China trade\" [Shanghai presumably — JHJ]. Byron was of course not \n\nthe only one who made himself into a debaser of tragedy. What is one to think of Robert Bough's Medea or the Best of Mothers with a Brute of a Husband, the title alone of which causes one to shudder.\n\nBut then, this was obviously what an overwhelming majority of the public asked for, both in Britain and overseas. The British capital teemed with small, and not so small, theatres that catered for the wishes of the low and lower middle classes and their first demand was to be entertained after a hard day's work: who cared for a complex five-act Shakespearean tragedy people referred to laugh their heads off with Slasher and Crasher and Cool as a Cucumber.\n\nIn British outposts abroad the attitude of the public was not very different, as is shown in this article for Shanghai. A comparison with Singapore and Hong Kong shows that tastes there were also exclusively in the direction of farce and comedy and it is not to be wondered that sometimes the same pieces were chosen, like William Rhodes' Bombastes Furioso (Sh.: 28.1.1851 and 5.5.1858; Hong Kong: 1.12.1848; Singapore: May 1844 and 25.5.1846) and Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep (Sh.: 23.4.1857; 15.3.1860; H.K.: 3.1.1861; Sp.: 1862).\n\nThat not all plays were to the liking of the local paper's critics has already been discussed. Apparently, no efforts were made from among the foreign community to write original comedies, a fact which was deplored by the Herald when it thought that there are certainly men capable of such mental exercise as the writing of burlesque.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211832,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1989",
        "page_number": 247,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "222\n\nthe stage properties were unexceptionable\". (NCH 22.10.1864)\n\n15,10-21. 10. 1864\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"Fra Diavolo\" (1858)\n\nT: Burlesque burletta (1 act)\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"The Maid and the Magpie\n\nT: Burlesque burletta (1 act), and other pieces.\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTh: N.N. (I\n\nR: NCH 22,10,1864\n\n17.10.1864 (Mon)\n\nConcert by Mr. Desvachez (violin) and some local amateurs\n\nTh: Shanghai Club\n\nR: Another musical evening was given by Mr. DESVACHEZ in the recently completed Shanghai Club building. On this occasion \"the audience was numerous and seemed to fully appreciate M. DESVACHEZ's musical talents”. (NCH 22.10.1864)\n\n22.10.-28. 10. 1864\n\nH.J. BYRON: \"The Bride of Abydos\" (1858)\n\nT: Burlesque extravaganza (1 act)\n\nN.N.: \"The Lady of Lyons”, (No author mentioned, so it may have been original play by Lytton or the burlesque by H.J. Byron (1868)), and other pieces.\n\nC: Lewis A.D.C.\n\nTh: N.N. (l\n\nR: For some actors of the Lewis troupe the strains of appearing every evening on the stage had become too much, for in the Herald it was \"regretted that in thus making strenuous efforts to afford satisfaction to their audiences, two of the most promising members of the Company have become so severely indisposed as to be unable for some time to appear in public\" (NCH 29.10.1864).\n\n5.11.1864 (Sat) (See: Theatrical Advertisement, No. 10)\n\nAmateur concert in aid of the repair fund of the \"Hongque Free Episcopal Church”, the \"Shanghai Vocal Quartette Club\" and Mr. Marquis Chisholm, piano, Programme:\n\n1. V. BELLINI: \"La Sonnambula\", duet (presumably 'Prendi l'anel ti dono' from act I) arranged for piano and harmonium by David Hermann ENGEL (1816-1877)\n\n2. Sir Henry BISHOP: \"Foresters sound the cheerful horn\" (glee)\n\n3. Marquis CHISHOLM: \"Japanese Fantasia”\n\n4. MULLER: \"Maying\" (sic; quartet)\n\n5. Ballad \"Arleen Aroom”\n\n6. Philipp Friedrich SILCHER (1799-1860): \"The Miller's Daughter” (quartet)\n\n7. G. VERDI: \"Rigoletto\", duet ('E il sol dell' anima', act I; 'Piangi, fanciulla', act I), arranged for piano by John George CALLCOT (1821-1895)\n\n8. Friedrich Wilhelm KÜCKEN (1810-1882): **Soldier's Love\" (glee)\n\n9. Valentin Eduard BECKER (1814-1890); \"Cheer Up Companions” (choral march)\n\n10. RADETSKA: \"There's music in the air\" (quartet)\n\n11. G. DONIZETTI: \"Lucrezia Borgia\", arrangement for flute and piano by JAMES\n\n12. Heinrich WERNER (1800-1833): \"War Song\" (glee)\n\n13. CAXTON: \"Breathe soft, ye winds\"\n\n14. William HORSLEY (and not F. Mendelssohn as stated in the advertisement): **By Celia's Arbour\" (song)\n\n15. Sir Henry BISHOP: \"Sleep gentle lady\" (glee)\n\n16. William Vincent WALLACE (1813-1865): \"Lurine\", duet arranged for piano and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]