Opera Fanatic
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A01=Cladio Benzecry
argentina
audiences
Author_Cladio Benzecry
buenos aires
Category=AVLF
Category=JHBS
cathartic music
colon opera house
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
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eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
fandom
globalization
gossip and passion
hardcore fans
high society
high-culture events
insightful analysis
major theory books
obsession
operagoing
passionate love
performing arts
popular culture
relationship to art
singing
social psychology
sociology
symphony
temperamental celebrities
wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780226043401
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 15 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jul 2011
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 Colon 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 our relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it.
Claudio E. Benzecry is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut.
