The opera fanatic : ethnography of an obsession / Claudio E. Benzecry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benzecry, Claudio E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opera.

Opera audiences.

Music fans.

Physical Description:

xx, 246 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Summary:

Why do audiences continue to flock to opera? For hardcore fans the answer, according to The Opera Fanatic, is passion-they do it for love. Opera lovers are an intense lot, Claudio E. Benzecry discovers in his look at the fanatics who haunt the legendary Colón Opera House in Buenos Aires, a key site for opera's globalization. Listening to these fans, Benzecry hears of two-hundred-mile trips for performances and nightlong campouts for tickets, while others testify to a particular opera's power to move them-whether to song or to tears-no matter how many times they have seen it before. Drawing on his insightful analysis of these acts of love, Benzecry proposes new ways of thinking about people's relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it. Book jacket.

Contents:

An opera house for the "Paris of South America"

"It was love at first sight": biography and social trajectory of standing-room dwellers

Foreground

Becoming an opera fan: cultural membership, mediation, and differentiation

Moral listening: symbolic boundaries, work on the self, and passionate engagement

Heroes, pilgrims, addicts, and nostalgics: repertories of engagement in the quest for transcendence

Finale

"They were playing in their shirtsleeves!" downfall, memory work end high-culture nationalism

"We've told you all about our life": conclusions and implications.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226043401

0226043401

9780226043425

0226043428

OCLC:

657223875