The Cultural Function of Opera

Yep, I confess I’m an opera fan, but I have to admit, it’s a pretty weird art form—the only one that I know of with a specific date of birth and a narrative history, all grounded on a historical mistake (link). And it has come to be rooted—okay, stuck—in the 19^th Century (don’t let them kid you, nobody goes to a “new” opera more than once, except as a condition of probation).

Arno J. Mayer throws some instructive light on the matter:

[B]etween 1848 and 1914 the opera became the queen of Dionysian art forms and cults. Of Baroque origin, like the museum it moved out of its courtly environment into the public sphere, bringing along most of its architectural and reportorial endowment. In fact, the opera never ceased to be courtly, and after 1840, by moving into new houses and acquiring a new repertoire, it became increasingly stately. Behind grandiose historical façades, the grand staircases, tiered loges, and mannered foyers were ideally suited for the rites of imitation that promoted and reflected the aristocratization of the bourgeoisie. Steeped in historical lore and received musical constructs, the operatic librettos, scores, and productions were no less conducive to this lasting remobilization of Europe’s ruling classes. Quite fittingly, the crowned heads of Germany, Austria and Russia took a special interest in the opera houses of their capitals, and all governments, including those of the Third Republic, allocated a disproportionately large share of their meager budgets for the arts to this exclusive and sacramental cultural activity.

—Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime 210-11 (1981)

Aside from the crowned heads, it is amazing how much of this persists today. Mayer goes on to lay responsibility for this framework at the feet of Richard Wagner:

Less and less interested in entertaining or achieving some ideal of stylistic purity, he turned to celebrating and reconstructing the social order of the German empire. Like his close friend Gottfried Semper, the preeminent architect of Baroque monumentalism in Central Europe, Wagner constructed music dramas of colossal pomp and self-possession calculated to mystify and spiritualize life inside and beyond the operatic temple.

—Id. 211

Be interesting to know (but I don’t suppose I will know) how some future cultural historian will understand the place of opera in our own time. I’d be interested in particular to know what he makes of video simulcasts (but that is way ahead of the story).