They’re called ‘drafts’ because you can hear the wind whistling through the gaps…

At the suggestion of the lovely Hannah I have uploaded the first draft chapter of my thesis here, with the introduction below. All suggestions welcome.

Here is the blurb I gave the Gang of Four to explain the context of the chapter:
Audience attitudes towards returning singers were governed by the prevailing ethos surrounding opera. This chapter explains how opera became ‘high art’ but still retained a measure of popularity. This sets the scene for an examination of other values for which people looked to opera: social status, local and national identity, and the role of the singer in delivering these values.

‘A necessity of human nature’ – Opera as high art

On Wednesday 26th March 1924 Henry Russell, ‘artistic director’ of the Melba-Williamson Opera Company, was the guest speaker at a Rotary Club luncheon in Melbourne. According to the Age, Russell declared that he ‘would not like his daughters to be surrounded by the atmosphere of comic opera such as it was patronized in Australia’. The sight of ‘twenty girls, with short skirts and bare legs, running about the stage’ was not art but ‘a form of prostitution.’[1]

The public and the theatrical fraternity responded furiously, leading Russell to defend himself in a letter to the Age. Russell explained that he had meant ‘artistic’ prostitution. After defending the moral integrity of the ladies participating in musical comedy in Australia, he placed his comments within the highbrow/lowbrow discussion:

If the amount of money and trouble expended in England, United States of America, &c, were devoted to works of serious artistic import, the youth of to-day would not whistle tunes of jazz and other meaningless ditties, but would familiarize themselves with the melodies of the great composers. That is what I meant when I stated that the artistic atmosphere of comic opera should not be allowed to dominate the youth of this country.[2]

A moral attack was thus defused into a comment on artistic merit. This allowed all sides to withdraw with honour: the more serious charge, the allegation of loose morals, had been dismissed. No one commented on the denigration of musical comedy. Its status as a lesser art form was a self-evident truth.

In the early twentieth century the image of opera as ‘high art’ was firmly established. Russell was speaking to a milieu that accepted that cultural pursuits could be ‘low’ or ‘elevated’. This was not the case when opera seasons had become a regular part of the theatrical scene less than one hundred years earlier. In the mid-nineteenth century the process of cultural bifurcation started, a process that lasted well into the twentieth century but failed to achieve its ultimate ideal, the sacralisation of opera.

For the rest of the chapter, go here.

[1] Age, 28 March 1924, p. 10.
[2] Ibid.