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Opera in America: A Cultural History
Looks at American opera productions, theaters, personalities, and companies, discusses the influence of Black theater, operetta, and Broadway musicals, and describes opera's place in American culture
- GenresMusicNonfictionHistory
611 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 1993
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September 22, 2022
Read back in the '90s when it came out. No doubt newer, more complete works have since been published, but if you're looking for a solid history of the emergence and proliferation of musical theater traditions in nineteenth century America, look no further.
Dizikes delivers a fascinating story of the traditions that European immigrants remembered and sought to replicate as they moved westward, initially for comfort and nostalgia, and then as a means of conspicuous consumption and class/social signaling -- the middle tier of gaudy jewelry box halls designed to showcase an audience more interested in one another than whatever may have been on stage.
Yet the construction of stages nonetheless required content to fill them, which in turn led to development of a variety of entertainment and talented entertainers. Enter vaudeville, social criticism, and in the soaring, lyric operatic works and concert excerpts of the late 19th and early 20th century not infrequent transcendence for the emotionally repressed theatergoers of the pre-amplified age.
Like all art forms, opera has evolved over time, and its relevance to Joe and Joanne Q. Public may be debated: it is, after all, but one subgenre of music theater and one with mainstream-alienating historical and class connotations that can undermine its commercial viability. What Dizikes shows is how opera's vitality and popularity helped develop small towns from isolated loci for trade into thriving centers of cultural exchange, interconnected by railroads and river systems that together served to bind a nation together. And we still retain many of the jewel boxes as architectural remnants, even if the featured spectacles have moved on from Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini to those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I've long since donated my copy of this book to the library, but I highly recommend you check it out.
Dizikes delivers a fascinating story of the traditions that European immigrants remembered and sought to replicate as they moved westward, initially for comfort and nostalgia, and then as a means of conspicuous consumption and class/social signaling -- the middle tier of gaudy jewelry box halls designed to showcase an audience more interested in one another than whatever may have been on stage.
Yet the construction of stages nonetheless required content to fill them, which in turn led to development of a variety of entertainment and talented entertainers. Enter vaudeville, social criticism, and in the soaring, lyric operatic works and concert excerpts of the late 19th and early 20th century not infrequent transcendence for the emotionally repressed theatergoers of the pre-amplified age.
Like all art forms, opera has evolved over time, and its relevance to Joe and Joanne Q. Public may be debated: it is, after all, but one subgenre of music theater and one with mainstream-alienating historical and class connotations that can undermine its commercial viability. What Dizikes shows is how opera's vitality and popularity helped develop small towns from isolated loci for trade into thriving centers of cultural exchange, interconnected by railroads and river systems that together served to bind a nation together. And we still retain many of the jewel boxes as architectural remnants, even if the featured spectacles have moved on from Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini to those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I've long since donated my copy of this book to the library, but I highly recommend you check it out.
Displaying 1 of 1 review