Death at the Opera

On May 10th 1849 in New York a long feud between two Shakespearean actors, the populist, scenery-chewing American Edwin Forrest and the aristocratic, cerebral Englishman William Charles Macready, finally went beyond strong words to violence. Forrest was the star of the Bowery Theatre, catering to the working and immigrant classes. Macready played at the Astor Place Opera House further north on Broadway, which catered to a wealthier audience. On May 7th both actors opened in Macbeth. Forrest was a success, while Macready’s performance was cut short by Forrest’s supporters who heckled and threw eggs, vegetables and furniture at the stage. On the night of Macready’s next performance a crowd of about 10,000 people gathered outside the Astor Place Opera House and attempted to storm the theatre. The police called in the National Guard, who fired point blank into the crowd. Twenty-two people died.

In Highbrow/Lowbrow Lawrence Levine writes that the Astor Place riot marked a change in United States culture. Slowly over the mid to late nineteenth century theatres stopped being places where all classes met for similar entertainments; not only did different classes start attending different theatres, they began to prefer different styles of performance, and eventually different content. It was the start of the “serious” vs “popular” divide.*

Could an Astor Place Riot ever have taken place in Australia? I don’t think so. Australians have generally had little interest in violent partisanship – that’s why the Cronulla riot shocked us. The issue of class raises passions in Australia, but I can’t recall the last time anyone died in an argument over it. And in Australia art has never been the focal point for class war, merely the opportunity for sniffiness and sneering. If I ever see a fight in the audience of the Sydney Opera House, it’s not likely to be because of artistic or class issues – it’s going to be because some inconsiderate jerk hasn’t turned off his mobile phone. (I will probably be the one who starts it. But then I’m a Cronulla boy.)

Richard Waterhouse observes that opera audiences in Australia in the nineteenth century were “more representative of the population at large than was the case in Europe”.** Eventually opera became more patronised by middle and upper classes, but the split into different “spaces” that occurred in America never happened here. After six weeks of performances the Australian National Theatre Opera Company had to extend its 1953 Sydney season because of the popularity of Menotti’s The Consul starring Marie Collier; but it had to move from the Tivoli Theatre to the Theatre Royal because a variety show with local and West End stars, puppeteers, and “Gene Jimae, ‘Harmonica Wizard’” was booked into the Tiv. In 2006 at Star City a season of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess was followed by Titanic The Musical. We have our separate pleasures but we don’t mind if they sit cheek by jowl.

Why did the serious/popular bifurcation happen the way it did in Australia?

* Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 68.
**Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure, (South Melbourne: Longman Australia, 1995), p. 136.