Someone Else's Music: Opera and the British

In Britain today, opera is routinely called elitist.But things were not always so. Examining shifting cultural attitudes over the century from 1920 to 2020, Someone Else's Music reveals a hidden history of popular opera-going in Britain, which defies the opera-elitism stereotype.At the same time, the book traces how, when, and why that stereotype arose.It uses opera as a lens through which to examine the broader history of changing cultural values in the UK, from 1920s Reithian ideals about art's civilising qualities to contemporary culture wars.The controversies opera has prompted over the last century reveal a great deal about national identity - who Britons think they are and who they want to be. The book ranges widely across topics including education, public broadcasting, arts policy, and attitudes towards subsidy, and traces opera's surprisingly close relationship with popular culture.We meet a diverse cast of characters, including working-class East-End opera fans, opera-singing