Phantasmagoria

First published in 1999, this original and entertaining sociological study takes a comprehensive and critical view of opera as unique cultural artefact as loss making ‘industry’, as institution with a ‘museum’ culture, and as consumed commodity of rare distinction and elaborate ritual. Specific chapters deal with opera within the contexts of musicological analysis, auratic art and fetishized taste: opera as business and as ‘museum’: singers’ opera: producers’ opera and audiences’ opera. There is