Description: Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain explores the interaction between opera and popular culture at a moment when there was a growing imperative to categorize art forms as "highbrow," "middlebrow," or "lowbrow." In this provocative and timely study, Alexandra Wilson considers how the opera debate of the 1920s continues to shape the ways in which we discuss the art form, and draws connections between the battle of the brows and present-day discussions about elitism.
Review Quotes: "This is an interesting book on a topic that has received little scholarly attention." -- W.E. Grim, CHOICE
"Through extensive primary-source analysis, Wilson captures an historical moment in which opera maintained social mobility and mass-culture appeal. [...] Not only does [the book] call into question longstanding presumptions about the intersections of opera, class, and politics, but it also points to methods for defining a heretofore littlestudied middlebrow culture. Thus, by demonstrating opera's pervious "resistance to reductive labeling", Wilson begins to reveal the cracks in social hierarchies long papered over by faulty cultural assumptions." -- Journal of Musicological Research"Scrupulously researched and forcefully argued." -- BBC Music Magazine"A richly textured account" -- Cambridge Opera Journal"What a book. This is a glorious work of scholarship that's one of the most readable and intelligent scholarly monographs I've encountered. Seriously impressive." -- Nathan Waddell, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham"Wilson is one of those rare musicologists capable of seeing opera in its widest historical context... Impressively researched and highly entertaining." -- Opera"Wilson is interested in how opera, seen as a "foreign" art form, fit into the British cultural scene in the 1920s. She is particularly interested in where opera fit into the ongoing discussions of "highbrow," "middlebrow," and "lowbrow" art and efforts to combat charges of elitism... For Wilson, opera in the decade was interesting precisely because it could not be pinned down in this system of cultural categorization." -- John M. Clum, New York Journal of Books "Alexandra Wilson's interest in the British operatic scene during the jazz age is longstanding, and, in this book, she imparts her wealth of knowledge in a lively and readable manner. She reveals that opera in the 1920s was the subject of fierce controversy- too highbrow for some, and not highbrow enough for others. Diving into impassioned, often rancorous, debates about opera, Wilson argues that much of the vexation was generation by peculiarly British notions of nationality and social class. It is essential reading for anyone who remains under the impression that this decade was an operatic wilderness in the UK." --Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds