A01=Kristen M. Turner
American
American musical style
American popular entertainment
assimilation
Author_Kristen M. Turner
Carmen
Category=AVC
Category=AVLF
Category=AVM
Category=JBSL
celebrity
citizenship
class
cultural appropriation
cultural erasure
dance
dancing
domesticity
Enrico Caruso
entertainment industry
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
evolution
exoticism
forthcoming
Gilded Age
highbrow
identity
immigration
impersonation
Irving Berlin
Italian identity
Lost Cause
male gaze
Marshall Circle
middlebrow
minstrel song
minstrelsy
musical comedy
musical style
musical theater
nationalism
Old South
opera
operetta
Pekin Theater
plantation show
popular entertainment
progressive
Progressive Era
progressivism
race
ragtime
Reconstruction
respectability
revue
Salomania
segregation
Social Darwinism
stock character
suffrage
Tin Pan Alley
True Woman
uplift
vaudeville
vocal timbre
Product details
- ISBN 9780252059872
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 25 Aug 2026
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Opera and popular entertainment intersected at the turn of the twentieth century just as Americans debated the terms of citizenship. Kristen M. Turner disentangles the intertwined histories of race, class, gender, culture, and musical style to explain opera's place in the mass culture of the ragtime era.
Turner examines performances ranging from Florenz Ziegfeld's early Follies to Black vaudeville shows to musical comedies, including everything from celebrity vehicles to obscure productions and overlooked artists. She reveals how opera's popularity in mass culture illuminates the effects of exclusionary immigration policies, pervasive racial and ethnic inequalities, debates over women's suffrage, and the imposition of legalized segregation. Performers and creators from many communities—white immigrants, Jewish, Black, and Asian American—strategically deployed operatic allusions and the genre's characteristic vocal timbre to assert their respectability, challenge stereotypes, and navigate oppressive social structures.
Nuanced and expansive, The Operatic Kaleidoscope explores opera's role when popular culture grappled with questions of race and citizenship.
Turner examines performances ranging from Florenz Ziegfeld's early Follies to Black vaudeville shows to musical comedies, including everything from celebrity vehicles to obscure productions and overlooked artists. She reveals how opera's popularity in mass culture illuminates the effects of exclusionary immigration policies, pervasive racial and ethnic inequalities, debates over women's suffrage, and the imposition of legalized segregation. Performers and creators from many communities—white immigrants, Jewish, Black, and Asian American—strategically deployed operatic allusions and the genre's characteristic vocal timbre to assert their respectability, challenge stereotypes, and navigate oppressive social structures.
Nuanced and expansive, The Operatic Kaleidoscope explores opera's role when popular culture grappled with questions of race and citizenship.
Kristen M. Turner Kristen studies the intersection of music, identity, and politics in the United States. She and Horace Maxile wrote the award-winning Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's Guide.
