CHAPTER 15 — The Grand Opera Fad

Chap­ter 15 of “The Ways of Men” titled “The Grand Opera” delves into the diverse rea­sons peo­ple attend the opera, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on Wag­n­er’s lengthy operas. The author is curi­ous about the dif­fer­ent class­es of opera-goers, high­light­ing three main cat­e­gories: the wealthy socialites who treat the opera as a social gath­er­ing rather than an art form, those who attend for the pres­tige and to be seen in high soci­ety, and the gen­uine music lovers who are often found in the less pres­ti­gious seats.

The chap­ter crit­i­cizes the first group for using the opera as a pre­text for social­iz­ing, describ­ing how the arrival tim­ing and the engage­ment with the per­for­mance are more about being seen and less about the music. It humor­ous­ly sketch­es the super­fi­cial­i­ty of their engage­ment, where the actu­al per­for­mances and the artists are sec­ondary to the social inter­ac­tions hap­pen­ing in the box­es and the audi­ence’s attire. The sec­ond group is sim­i­lar­ly cri­tiqued for their lack of gen­uine inter­est in the music, attend­ing mere­ly because it’s con­sid­ered a fash­ion­able and elite activ­i­ty. Despite their lack of musi­cal under­stand­ing or appre­ci­a­tion, their pres­ence is part of the oper­a’s social fab­ric.

The real affec­tion for opera is found among the third group, who are por­trayed as sin­cere music lovers. Despite their high­er place­ment in the the­atre, their engage­ment and appre­ci­a­tion for the per­for­mances are high­light­ed as more authen­tic than that of those in the more expen­sive seats. The author com­pares this gen­uine enjoy­ment of music to a scene in Tang­iers, where the local pop­u­la­tion is mes­mer­ized by a musi­cian, draw­ing a par­al­lel between the height­ened emo­tion­al states induced by music across dif­fer­ent cul­tures.

Through­out the chap­ter, the author uses vivid analo­gies and crit­i­cal obser­va­tions to point out the super­fi­cial­i­ty and gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion found among opera-goers. The cri­tiques of social super­fi­cial­i­ty ver­sus gen­uine musi­cal engage­ment offer a humor­ous yet point­ed com­men­tary on soci­etal behav­iors and pri­or­i­ties, ulti­mate­ly ques­tion­ing the var­ied moti­va­tions behind attend­ing the grand opera.