Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780-1880 (review)

Jennifer Hall-Witt should be commended for her excellent work in Fashionable Acts. Using an interdisciplinary perspective that combines social history and contextual musicology, she discusses the intersection of opera patronage with the aristocratic and fashionable classes in London for a century. This period, from 1780 to 1880, is an absolute trove of musical possibility: at the time, London was one of the major financial centers supporting the production of Continental opera, and the infrastructure that would power the British discovery of its own musical abilities was being formed. Hall-Witt reverses the typical musicological monograph on patronage, studying it not from the point of view of the composer or the performer but instead from the point of view of the patron. Readers familiar with the musicians of the era will recognize famous individuals such as michael Costa, Giulia Grisi, and Jenny lind, but these performers and conductors receive little attention in comparison to tastemakers and patrons. Fashionable Acts gives a much needed supplement to the histories of the london operatic institutions at Haymarket and Covent Garden. It focuses less on the premieres and revivals there and more on examining how the modes of patronage presented within these institutions exemplified a shift in eliteculture manners. during the period, the aristocracy and fashionable society (often distinct but overlapping groups) moved from a noisy operatic culture, constantly talking, having assignations, and being much more interested in the Theater of the Great (audience members watching each other) than in the opera itself, to a restrained culture, interested more in the work and its artistic presentation.

What makes this monograph particularly exciting is Hall-Witt's successful synthesis of three historiographical tropes: lydia Goehrs formulation of the increasing importance of the individual musical "work" as something self-contained and artistic under its own merits; new ideas of masculinity and nationalism in Britain that solidified gender roles in the mid-nineteenth century; and the middle-class suspicion of the elite classes as decadent. Hall-Witt argues that these were all intertwined. The acceptance of the "work" meant that the elite classes began increasingly to police themselves to make sure the operatic work stayed contiguous—instead of crying out for encores or for favorite songs from favorite singers. The growing separation of genders meant that female patronage of the opera, so important at the beginning of the period, diminished as elite women began to avoid the "Theatre of the Great." The fashion for being seen at the opera waned as female aristocrats conformed to a more evangelical ideal of self-presentation as good, respectable philanthropists in order to gain and keep the respect of the middle classes. Operatic patronage by aristocratic men changed as well, as men increasingly socialized themselves into single-sex activities (including public schools, private clubs, and a more strenuous and taxing Parliament) to be replaced by connoisseurs from either the mercantile or middle classes. These trends made the opera a potentially broader space for the mixing of social classes. When the elite took the opera seriously, the middle classes could begin to turn from other genres (such as oratorios) and consider opera as a potential pastime.

Despite her thorough research and lucid, often breezy manner of presentation, there are parts of this book that betray its origins as a Phd thesis. Hall-Witt's endnotes almost overwhelm her written text, diminishing her own voice. While Hall-Witt's command of primary, social history, and musicology sources is commendable, she has not gone beyond these to other rich areas of interdisciplinary work, particularly in the field of english literature. Consequently, she has missed some remarkable studies on audiences and crowds, such as that of Phyllis Weliver, that would have greatly aided her arguments.

In spite of its subtitle, the book is highly weighted to events before 1850. Most of the 1850 to 1880 discussion is confined to her sixth chapter, which instead of illuminating the issues of...