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Is opera a decadent bourgeois pastime?

7K views 50 replies 30 participants last post by  Ralfy 
#1 ·
Don't get me wrong, I love opera. But sometimes it feels like a secret club for people who have made it, a way of showing to others how successful and cultured you are. I'm not denying that people genuinely love the music, but it seems to be a bonus rather than the whole point for some. Maybe I'm just insecure and paranoid, but I can't help feeling judgement coming down on me from other audience members - what is he doing here? He's not even dressed properly, doesn't even talk properly, doesn't even know the rules, who let that oik into our special club?

Am I being grossly unfair? I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but is it totally unnecessary? Is anyone who wants to get into opera welcomed with open arms, or is there a certain standard to maintain? Should some people stay away altogether? Is this a peculiarly British problem/non-problem?
 
#45 ·
All this 'decadent bourgeois' talk is so 60s. Honestly, worrying about being bourgeois is only slightly less bourgeois than spending time deciding who else merits the description, if you know what I mean.

I am middle class. I venture to suggest that the great majority of regular posters here are, also.

I certainly have bourgeois values - I like owning nice things, I have a mortgage, I am married to a person of the opposite sex (and only one of them), I dig the rule of law...

As for 'decadent', well I guess I lack the resources and, these days, the energy to over-indulge.

In other words,

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Let's not pretend that's the worst thing one could be :)
 
#49 ·
When I was growing up I knew too many Italian-American barbers playing opera in their barbershop radio for me to ever consider the 'elitist' parvenus as being the dominant audience for this art.
 
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