Someone Else's Music: Opera and the British

In Britain today, opera is routinely called elitist. But things were not always thus. Examining shifting cultural attitudes over the century from 1920 to 2020, Someone Else’s Music recounts a hidden history of popular opera-going in Britain, which defies the opera-elitism stereotype. At the same time, the book traces how, when, and why that stereotype arose, revealing it to be a politically motivated idea founded in deep-seated British anxieties about class, education, national identity, and money. It uses opera as a lens through which to examine the broader history of changing cultural values in the United Kingdom, from 1920s Reithian ideals about art’s civilising qualities to contemporary culture wars. The controversies opera has prompted over the last century reveal a great deal about who Britons think they are and who they want to be.

Considering the role played by the arts in shaping national identities, this book ranges widely across topics, including education, broadcasting, cultural policy, and attitudes towards subsidy, and traces opera’s surprisingly close relationship with popular culture. It will force the reader to question everything they thought they knew about social class and artistic taste, and is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the debates we are having today about arts funding, accessibility, and who opera is ‘for’.