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

Fashionable Acts amply fulfills its stated objective to explore “the nexus between the opera, elite society, and British political culture from 1780 to 1880.” Hall-Witt argues “that the transformation of audience behavior occurred in large part because of changes in how the upper class conducted itself at the opera as commercializing forces eroded the opera’s subscription system and as elite culture itself was transformed” (3). The book is cleverly organized in two “acts” (complete with “overtures”—introductions to each act—and a finale). The first, comprising Chapters 1 through 3, attends to the Georgian period and the second comprising Chapters 4 through 6, to the Victorian era. As an expansion and revision of the author’s dissertation, this dense and detailed study covers an extremely large range of topics related primarily to political, social, and economic history, but it also touches on theater and music history. All in all, it provides a valuable glimpse of society and culture through a lens that focuses on a century-long shift in opera audiences’ make-up and behavior.

The author has drawn from abundant evidence, including primary sources such as archival documents related to subscribers and ticket sales at opera houses; contemporary journalistic criticism and reports; and correspondence, memoirs, and diaries of the era. Given the breadth of the subject matter, it is hardly surprisingly that Hall-Witt often relies heavily (and sometimes indiscriminately) on secondary sources, as attested by the copious endnotes and the frequent text references to the scholarship of others. (The book could have benefited from a bibliography, although the author probably had to defer to the publisher’s norms). That few of Hall-Witt’s secondary sources, which draw from a wide array of disciplines, can be considered “musicological” (or musical) in scope is odd, especially given the ever-growing body of scholarship about British music, opera in England, and, especially, the Victorian musical press that she could have used to tease out deeper meanings in her study. The small proportion of musical studies represented gives one pause in considering the extent and nature of the interdisciplinarity of the methodology.

The importance of this book to those interested in opera spectatorship is beyond doubt. But since the book is not about “opera” or “music” per se, some readers might miss discussion of certain topics. For example, in her discussion of repertory (surely a primary consideration in considering audience), Hall-Witt refers to Cowgill’s excellent work with regard to Mozart, but otherwise she gives relatively little attention to the particular operatic works that were performed.¹

Hall-Witt compares opera audiences in London with those in Paris (because of existing studies about audiences there), but her argument might have been even more compelling had she compared English opera audiences with those for other forms of theatrical entertainment in London. Quibbles aside, however, Fashionable Acts furnishes valuable information about the social context of opera in London during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is an important addition to social history that will assist scholars in grasping the complex interactions responsible for transforming the opera experience in a single country during a thriving era.