Chinese Opera as Cultural Identity: Artistic Development and Socio-Psychological Functions during China’s New Democratic Revolution (1919–1949)

Objective:  This study examines how Chinese revolutionary operas created between 1919 and 1949 contributed to the construction of cultural identity, focusing on their artistic evolution and socio-psychological functions.

Methods and Materials: Using qualitative textual and musicological analysis, eight representative operas were purposively selected for their revolutionary themes, mid-twentieth-century composition or major revision, and documented performance history. Librettos, scores, and critical essays were analysed using Propp’s morphology of the folktale to code narrative functions and roles, and Ju Qihong’s pan-opera framework to identify musical–dramatic fusion, folk–Western hybrid orchestration, mass choruses, and emblematic stage imagery. No audience data were collected; inferences about impact are interpretive.

Findings: The corpus reveals a trajectory from early experiments to later mature works of the 1950s–1960s. Narrative arcs stabilise around oppression–awakening–struggle–victory, with the “collective hero” replacing the lone protagonist and villains fixed as feudal or imperial forces. Musically, regional banqiang and folk idioms are progressively integrated with Western harmonic writing and large choral textures, yielding a nationalised yet modern operatic language and a codified paradigm of revolutionary heroism.

Conclusion: Revolutionary Chinese opera in the New Democratic Revolution era functioned both as aesthetic innovation and as a cultural-psychological medium that articulated collective memory, patriotic affect, and embodied solidarity. By nationalising an imported genre through folk-based music, archetypal revolutionary narratives, and ensemble staging, these works helped shape modern Chinese cultural identity. They provided a template for later socialist and contemporary opera.