The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera, by Daniel Snowman – review

By Vera RuleI've always wanted those learned, luscious Covent Garden programme essays to cover the social aspect of opera (who performed what for whom when, and for what, usually non-musical, reasons), and Snowman's book supplies the want, very well. Who went – aristos, aspirants, romantics, lechers, diggers in the gold boomtowns of Ballarat and San Francisco splashing their nuggets on arias with an aura of class. Where they went: the boxes of 18th-century Italian theatres, mini-drawing rooms ...

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