Operatic Infrastructures
Materiality and Meaning in 1890s London, Paris, and New York
Will be published approx. on 28. May 2026
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-226-84683-5 (ISBN)
Description
An exploration of the fundamental relationship between opera and urban modernity in three iconic cities: London, Paris, and New York.
At the end of the nineteenth century, London, Paris, and New York were quintessential modern metropolises and vital centers for opera. In Operatic Infrastructures, Flora Willson examines opera's roots in the material worlds of these cities. Reaching beyond histories of opera as spectacle, she investigates the physical underpinnings of opera at the century's end as an inter-urban, multimedia network.
Operatic Infrastructures considers emergent technologies such as the telephone and the subway, but it also retrieves the hidden, forgotten, and otherwise effaced traces of systems such as storage facilities and colonial trade routes. It takes seriously the mundane aspects of materiality, from the blandest cliches of newspaper columns to the fine print of insurance certificates. In doing so, the book reveals just how far these interfaces with modern urban life reached into opera's own systems of meaning-making and performance in the 1890s-making it impossible to demarcate neatly between "opera" and its "context." Without such operatic infrastructures, Willson shows, there would be no opera at all.
At the end of the nineteenth century, London, Paris, and New York were quintessential modern metropolises and vital centers for opera. In Operatic Infrastructures, Flora Willson examines opera's roots in the material worlds of these cities. Reaching beyond histories of opera as spectacle, she investigates the physical underpinnings of opera at the century's end as an inter-urban, multimedia network.
Operatic Infrastructures considers emergent technologies such as the telephone and the subway, but it also retrieves the hidden, forgotten, and otherwise effaced traces of systems such as storage facilities and colonial trade routes. It takes seriously the mundane aspects of materiality, from the blandest cliches of newspaper columns to the fine print of insurance certificates. In doing so, the book reveals just how far these interfaces with modern urban life reached into opera's own systems of meaning-making and performance in the 1890s-making it impossible to demarcate neatly between "opera" and its "context." Without such operatic infrastructures, Willson shows, there would be no opera at all.
Reviews / Votes
"Operatic Infrastructures makes us think in new ways about music and material culture. With a keen eye for the telling detail, a nose for an untapped historical source, and an ear for revelatory voices, Flora Willson demonstrates how operatic life in London, Paris, and New York was enmeshed in urban landscapes navigated by emerging technologies. This tour de force of archival research combined with theoretical savvy is a vital intervention in nineteenth-century opera studies." * Laura Tunbridge, University of Oxford * "Willson's Operatic Infrastructures is a vivid account of late nineteenth-century opera's material affordances and media channels. We learn how the mortar, wood, fabric, and architecture of opera houses, the objects they contained, and the fires that obliterated them came to inflect opera's sounds and its productions, and how electrical wires, paper trails, and chains of transportation and communication created synergies that catapulted opera into the modern era. A meticulous and invaluable new history covering a critical period in opera's lifespan." * Carolyn Abbate, Harvard University * "Operatic Infrastructures is a pyrotechnical achievement. Willson's prose positively flickers with insights, as she dispatches us down intercontinental telephone lines, along undercity train tracks, through postal networks and international news outlets, into insurance offices, and inside production workshops and costume storage facilities-before drawing these volatile infrastructures back into the great opera houses of 1890s London, Paris, and New York. This is the richest account we have of the art form's material history, of the hidden media we didn't know we loved, and of the flammable stuff of opera." * James Q. Davies, University of California, Berkeley *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
18 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-84683-5 (9780226846835)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Flora Willson is a UK-based writer, broadcaster, and cultural historian of music. Until 2025, she was a senior lecturer in nineteenth-century music at King's College London. Her research is published in numerous journals and essay collections. Beyond academia, Willson is one of The Guardian's classical music writers, appears frequently on BBC radio, and works closely with opera companies and other arts organizations on publications and events.
Content
Introduction: Opera and Infrastructure
1. Opera Down the Line
2. Middle Men: Mediating Italian Opera in London
3. The Met: A Pyrotechnical History
4. Behind the Scenes at Opera's Imaginary Museum
5. Nellie Melba and the Infrastructural Politics of Bel Canto
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
1. Opera Down the Line
2. Middle Men: Mediating Italian Opera in London
3. The Met: A Pyrotechnical History
4. Behind the Scenes at Opera's Imaginary Museum
5. Nellie Melba and the Infrastructural Politics of Bel Canto
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index