"Mei Lanfang Opera Record" (1920-1936)

In the early twentieth century, when the gramophone record newly entering China’s market encountered with Peking Opera which had already been fully developed, unprecedented inspiration had been freed. During that time, Peking Opera was the most popular form of entertainment, therefore it was supposed to be the most collaborative choice for record in order to adapt to local culture. At that time, Mr Langfang Mei was the most famous Peiking Opera artist, his record had then been valued as the most representative and aesthetic art production both in opera field and record field. Most of Mei’s record works were made from 1920 to 1936, which was his most flourish time through his art career. Based on art theory, record history, textual criticism and many other disciplines, using the history of drama criticism, this paper studied Lanfang Mei’s records systematically by analyzing its art inclination, commercial value and audience aesthetic, which were expressed by his works in different periods.This paper consisted of three parts. In the first two part, I tried to took Mei’s return from the United States in 1930 as a watershed, Lanfang Mei’s records were divided into two periods and studied by two chapters, respectively. The first period last from 1920 to 1930, and the second is between 1931 to 1936. Each charter shared a similar analyzing model,first it to list, discussed all his works in the purpose of summarizing its art inclination. Second is analyze the market demand and audience aesthetic on his works at the aspect of business operation from the record company. Last one is to discuss the mutual influences between record development and Lanfang Mei’s works. Then the third chapter demonstrated the influence of Lanfang Mei’s records on opera development.The main innovation of this paper is to analyze Lanfang Mei’s records according to different time period instead of simply summarizing. During each period in his career, we tired to summarized his art inclination, and also to conclude the cause of his art focus at the aspect of market and audience. At the last part we compared the relationship between his works and the development of record history was studied.