The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession - Softcover

Benzecry, Claudio E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226043428 ISBN 13: 9780226043425

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2011

Synopsis

Though some dismiss opera as old-fashioned, it shows no sign of disappearing from the world’s stage. So why do audiences continue to flock to it? Given its association with wealth, one might imagine that opera tickets function as a status symbol. But while a desire to hobnob with the upper crust might motivate the occasional operagoer, for hardcore fans the real answer, according to The Opera Fanatic, is passion—they do it for love.

Opera lovers are an intense lot, Claudio E. Benzecry discovers in his look at the fanatics who haunt the legendary Colón Opera House in Buenos Aires, a key site for opera’s globalization. Listening to the fans and their stories, Benzecry hears of two-hundred-mile trips for performances and nightlong camp-outs for tickets, while others testify to a particular opera’s power to move them—whether to song or to tears—no matter how many times they have seen it before. Drawing on his insightful analysis of these acts of love, Benzecry proposes new ways of thinking about people’s relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it.

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From the Author

"The wonder of The Opera Fanatic is that nobody wrote this book before. An ethnography of opera fans in the Buenos Aires area, this study pinpoints a phenomenon that is worldwide in scope today. Challenging the common sociological wisdom that attending high-culture events expresses the need to establish class distinctions and to build cultural capital, Benzecry provides a convincing alternative model of operagoing that, at least for a sizable public, portrays this activity as affective, quasi-religious, and addictive."--Herbert Lindenberger, Stanford University 
"In this imaginative and deeply researched study, Benzecry provides a powerful alternative to the notion that people engage culture to gain distinction over others. He shows that meaning and passion are central, that people are looking for transcendence, and that opera feels like love. This theoretically sophisticated work will help to change the conversation about cultural consumption."--Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University     "The Opera Fanatic crucially helps bring further complexity to the understanding of high-culture consumption and, more generally, to the sociological study of culture." The Canadian Journal of Sociology           "Claudio Benzecry's ethnography of opera fanatics at the venerable Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires is a path-breaking and insightful work of cultural sociology. Aside from offering a nuanced portrayal of how opera lovers think, it launches a frontal and convincing criticism of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of taste."--Andrew Moravcik, European Journal of Sociology                                                                             "The study's success is twofold:it offers a textured phenomenological ethnography of opera-love that is informed by recent social and economic conditions in Buenos Aires and, as a study of cultural consumption as love--as a sociology of passionate attachment--The Opera Fanatic is a thoroughgoing and convincing critique of the limits of sociological approaches to culture."Contemporary Sociology "By delving into how and why people love opera, Benzecry provides a work that should appeal not only to music sociologists, but also to cultural sociologists of all types." Culture, Tim Dowd, Emory University

From the Back Cover

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0226043428
• ISBN 13: 9780226043425
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256