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 Colón 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 people’s relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Winner of the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture, given by ASA, 2012.Award blurb: “The Opera Fanatic is a beautiful book. A work of art as well as intellect, it conveys to its readers not just the fans’ passionate love for their opera but also the author’s love of his subject and his passion for understanding.”
“A sociologist’s book documents the true face of opera fandom. I’d love to see an opera guide that depicts the world of opera as Benzecry’s subjects experience it: a place of gossip and passion and temperamental celebrities and cathartic music, none of it requiring any specialized knowledge whatsoever.” Anne Midgette,
The Washington Post.
“The study of such a peculiar world needed to be conducted and published. It has been done in Argentina- a very particular context- and through really outstanding work. Now, inspired by it, it is on us, particularly in Europe, to keep delving in the profile of the opera fanatic.” Jean-Philippe Thielay-
NonFiction.Fr “One of the ten major theory books since 2000… Benzecry’s vision of socially prepared solitude opens a way for sociology to do justice to the things people love.” Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania
What makes a fan a fan? What pushes a person past an affection for a certain something–a football team, or comic books, or a certain band–into a real, genuine, overpowering
love? I’m convinced the answer lies somewhere in Claudio Benzecry’s The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession. KIRKUS REVIEWS.
“The Opera Fanatic is a wonderfully eyeopening work that draws us into the complex world of the opera fanatic in Buenos Aires. Thoughtfully crafted and vividly written, it will appeal to a wide audience and be an excellent addition to courses on culture, social psychology, and qualitative methods.”
American Journal of Sociology
From the Author
“The wonder of The Opera Fanatic is that nobody wrote this book before. An ethnography of opera fans in the Buenos Aires area, this study pinpoints a phenomenon that is worldwide in scope today. Challenging the common sociological wisdom that attending high-culture events expresses the need to establish class distinctions and to build cultural capital, Benzecry provides a convincing alternative model of operagoing that, at least for a sizable public, portrays this activity as affective, quasi-religious, and addictive.”–Herbert Lindenberger, Stanford University “In this imaginative and deeply researched study, Benzecry provides a powerful alternative to the notion that people engage culture to gain distinction over others. He shows that meaning and passion are central, that people are looking for transcendence, and that opera feels like love. This theoretically sophisticated work will help to change the conversation about cultural consumption.”–Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University “The Opera Fanatic crucially helps bring further complexity to the understanding of high-culture consumption and, more generally, to the sociological study of culture.” The Canadian Journal of Sociology “Claudio Benzecry’s ethnography of opera fanatics at the venerable Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires is a path-breaking and insightful work of cultural sociology. Aside from offering a nuanced portrayal of how opera lovers think, it launches a frontal and convincing criticism of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of taste.”–Andrew Moravcik, European Journal of Sociology “The study’s success is twofold:it offers a textured phenomenological ethnography of opera-love that is informed by recent social and economic conditions in Buenos Aires and, as a study of cultural consumption as love–as a sociology of passionate attachment–The Opera Fanatic is a thoroughgoing and convincing critique of the limits of sociological approaches to culture.”Contemporary Sociology “By delving into how and why people love opera, Benzecry provides a work that should appeal not only to music sociologists, but also to cultural sociologists of all types.” Culture, Tim Dowd, Emory University
From the Inside Flap
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From the Back Cover
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About the Author
Claudio E. Benzecry is associate professor of communication studies and sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession and the coeditor of Social Theory Now, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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