Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain

In the 1920s British nightlife was full of jazz, the Charleston, cinema and musical theatre, and opera had to find its place among them. Alexandra Wilson looks at how the art form was argued over during the so-called battle of the brows, the debate about which culture counted as highbrow, middlebrow or lowbrow.

Wilson shows that opera was hard to file neatly: some commentators judged it too highbrow and others thought it not highbrow enough. Performances took place in music halls, cinemas, cafés and schools as well as opera houses, and the book introduces the critics, conductors and celebrity singers who shaped the scene. It argues that the same debate still colours how people talk about opera today, including the question of elitism.

The book will interest readers of opera history, the interwar period and twentieth-century British culture. Edition note: published by OUP USA in 2019, 256 pages, ISBN-13: 9780190912666.