The history of the Model Operas can be traced back to a time long before the Cultural Revolution. Already in the 1940s, and especially since Mao's Yan'an Talks in 1942, Chinese traditional theatricals had been adapted to fit new ideological contexts, and all the important theoretical principles underlying the Model Operas had already been formulated, as Mao gave out a directive to adhere to "revolutionary realism and romanticism", to present life realistically but model-like and "on a higher plane".

Since the founding of the New China, the reform of traditional arts started. Many a traditional opera was transformed, according to the slogan ("to wield through the old to create the new and through the Western to create a Chinese national art"). Traditional works were revised, mainly in plot, and new operas with contemporary, revolutionary themes were written, but not enough to Mao's liking. In the early 1960s, he complained that China's stage was still dominated by "emperors, kings, general, chancellors, literati and beauties", instead of the proletarian heroic model that could teach and serve the broad masses of the people.

Mao's demands for a new revolutionary national art enabled his wife, Jiang Qing, to start her crusade to dominate the arts world. The reforms directed by Jiang eventually evolved into the complete banning of all but five Peking Opera works ("Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy", "The Story of the Red Lamp", "Shajia Village", "On the Dock" and "Raid on the White Tiger Regiment"), known as "(Revolutionary) Model Operas". The highly heterogeneous form of Model Operas was hand-picked by Jiang as the most operative vehicle for the propagation of Communist ideology. Two revolutionary modern ballets ("The Red Detachment of Women" and "The White-haired Girl") and one symphony ("Shajia Village") were also chosen to join Jiang's group of "model" performance pieces advocated to show educational effects of the heroes that had to be "lofty, glorious and complete", or of the villains that had to be base, shabby, ugly and stupid.

All means of entertainment in the Cultural Revolution were flooded by propagandist messages, aiming to reinforce the public's respect and adoration towards Mao and theatres were one of the most powerful mediums. It explained "class struggles" and encouraged the public to behave and think according to what was deemed as correct. Hence actors acted as "model" characters in theatres and television programs to educate the public.

The Model Operas were based in great parts on traditional Chinese as well as "Western" musical-dramatic heritage, fashioned in a way prescribing certain fixed meanings by multiplying them on all possible levels of the work, performing, musical, textual and theoretical. Today, you would take it something queer. In song-and-dance extravaganzas with revolutionary messages, while the graceful dance moves of these shows drew from Russian ballets, the actresses wore earthy peasant garb which reinforced communism's image of a noble proletariat.

Monopolizing China's theatrical and musical stage for a decade, it is undeniable that the Model Operas have influenced the musical taste of the greater part of China's population in the period since the Cultural Revolution. During the heights of the Cultural Revolution, each one of them would have been watched by every Chinese man, woman and child more than twice a year on average. They are an element in Chinese cultural history that cannot be - but often is - overlooked.

The Cultural Revolution was a period of unprecedented cultural stagnation. These Model Operas, paradigmatic for the whole gamut of Cultural Revolution culture, are habitually damned as an aberration in terms both of aesthetic and cultural development. However, some experts argued that the notion that there was nothing but the eight Model Operas in Cultural Revolution culture is mistaken. Artistic production was not restricted to the Model Operas (coming to eighteen by the end of the period). In fact, they are manifestations of a hybrid taste calling for the transformation of Chinese tradition to meet foreign standards, a taste which over the last hundred years has led to the creation of a Chinese culture with a distinctly foreign imprint. The Model Operas have their rightful place in a long series of attempts to synthesize foreign and Chinese traditions, a series that has continued to the present day.

Interestingly, Model Operas are still very much alive today. Songbooks and audiovisual products of the Model Operas are readily available and quite popular with consumers. Their songs are often sung in karaoke bars and at parties, as pleasure and nostalgia elicited.