Skip to main content

Performing Legitimacy as Civil Opera Houses

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Performing Legitimacy
  • 379 Accesses

Abstract

As part of their ongoing legitimation work, opera houses engage with the community of which they are a part. When reaching out to audiences who are not familiar with the art forms of opera, ballet, or classical music, it is crucial that the opera houses do not neglect the values attached to them by the art world. This chapter investigates how the Metropolitan Opera and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet manage such balancing in performing legitimacy as civil opera houses. If being perceived as authentic in their dedication to serve both society and art, opera houses will be able to achieve widespread approval and artistic credibility, which in turn will help secure their financial stability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ahlquist, Karen. 1997. Democracy at the Opera: Music, Theather and Culture in New York City, 1815–60. Champaign: IL University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. Cultural pragmatics: Social performance between ritual and strategy. Sociological Theory 22(4): 527–573.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2006. The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Victoria D., and Anne E. Bowler. 2014. Art at the crossroads: The arts in society and the sociology of art. Poetics 43: 1–19. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2014.02.003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beisel, Nicola. 1993. Morals versus art: Censorship, the politics of interpretation, and the Victorian nude. American Sociological Review 58(2): 145–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benzecry, Claudio E. 2011. The Opera Fanatic. Ethnography of an Obsession. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2014. An opera house for the “Paris of South America”: Pathways to the institutionalization of high culture. Theory and Society 43(2): 169–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benzecry, Claudio, and Randall Collins. 2014. “The high of cultural experience: Toward a microsociology of cultural consumption.” Sociological Theory 32(4): 307–326.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bereson, Ruth. 2002. The Operatic State. Cultural Policy and the Opera House. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Birkelund, Gunn Elisabeth, and Yannick Lemel. 2013. Lifestyles and social stratification: An explorative study of France and Norway. Comparative Social Research 30(Class and Stratification Analysis): 189–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjørnsen, Egil. 2009. Norwegian Cultural Policy: A Civilizing Mission? PhD, Center for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bjørnsen, Egil. 2012. Norwegian cultural policy—A civilizing mission? The Cultural Rucksack and abstract faith in the transforming powers of the arts. Poetics 40: 382–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunsson, Nils. 2002. The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions and Actions in Organizations, 2nd ed. Oslo: Abstrakt forlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Tak Wing, and John H. Goldthorpe. 2005. The social stratification of theatre, dance and cinema attendance. Cultural Trends 4(3): 193–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2007a. Social stratification and cultural consumption: Music in England. European Sociological Review 23(1): 1–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2007b. Social stratification and cultural consumption: The visual arts in England. Poetics 35: 168–190.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheatham, Wallace McClain. 1988. Black male singers at the Metropolitan Opera. The Black Perspective in Music 16(1):3–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Christophersen, Catharina, Jan-Kåre Breivik, Anne D. Homme, and Lise H. Rykkja. 2015. The Cultural Rucksack. A National Programme for Arts and Culture in Norwegian Schools. Oslo: Arts Council Norway.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, Hans Fredrik, and Tore Helseth. 2006. To knurrende løver: kulturpolitikkens historie 1814–2014. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daloz, Jean-Pascal. 2007. Political elites and conspicuous modesty: Norway, Sweden, Finland in comparative perspective. Comparative Social Research 26: 173–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2013. Rethinking Social Distinction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • DiMaggio, Paul J. 1982a. Cultural entrepeneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: The classification and framing of American art. Media, Culture and Society 4: 303–322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 1982b. Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: The creation of an organizational base for high culture in America. Media Culture and Society 4: 33–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 1992. Cultural boundaries and sturctural change: The extension of the high culture model to theater, opera, and the dance, 1900–1940. In Cultivating Differences, ed. Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier, 21–57. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Journal of Sociology 48(2): 147–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erickson, Bonnie H. 1996. Culture, class, and connections. American Journal of Sociology 102(1): 217–251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gripsrud, Jostein, Jan Fredrik Hovden, and Hallvard Moe. 2011. Changing relations: Class, Education and Cultural Capital. Poetics 39(6): 507–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gullestad, Marianne. 1991. The Scandinavian version of egalitarian individualism. Ethnologica Scandinavica 21: 3–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haarr, Tone Knudsen, and Anne Krogstad. 2011. Myten om den norske kultureliten. Sosiologisk tidsskrift 19(1): 6–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halle, David. 1993. Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halvorsen, Pål. 2014. Kritikk i en egalitær kultur. En studie av litteraturkritikere i Norge. Master, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hennion, Antoine. 2001. Music lovers. Taste as performance. Theory, Culture & Society 18(5): 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hillman-Chartrand, Harry, and Claire McCaughey. 1989. The arm’s length principle and the arts. An international perspective—past, present and future. In Who’s to Pay for the Arts? The International Search for Models of Arts Support, eds. M. C. Cummings and J. M. D. Schuster, 43–78. New York, NY: American Council for the Arts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hovden, Jan Fredrik, and Karl Knapskog. 2014a. Høgt og lågt i Stortinget og departementa. Kulturbruk og kulturorientering hjå dei norske politisk-administrative elitane. Sosiologisk tidsskrift 22: 276–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2014b. Tastekeepers—Taste structures, power and aesthetic-political positions in the elites of the Norwegian cultural field. Nordisk kulturpolitisk tidsskrift 17(1): 55–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, Ronald N. 2012. Entertainment media and the aesthetic public sphere. In The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald N. Jacobs, and Philip Smith, 318–340. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jarness, Vegard. 2013. Class, Status, Closure. The Petropolis and Cultural Life. PhD, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, James H. 1995. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Victoria. 2007. What is organizational imprinting? Cultural entrepreneurship in the founding of the Paris Opera. American Journal of Sociology 113(1): 97–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2008. Backstage at the Revolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Paul. 2007. Beyond the semantic ‘Big Bang’: Cultural sociology and an aesthetic public sphere. Cultural Sociology 1(1): 73–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karp, Ivan, Christin Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine (eds.). 1992. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kawashima, Nobuka. 2006. Audience development and social inclusion in Britain: Tensions, contradictions and paradoxes in policy and their implications for cultural management. International Journal of Cultural Policy 12(1): 55–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, Michèle. 1992. Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-middle Class. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, Michèle, and Laurent Thévenot. 2000. Introduction. Toward a renewed comparative cultural sociology. In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States, ed. Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Larsen, Håkon. 2012. Kulturbegrepets historie i den nye kulturpolitikken. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 11(4): 27–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2014. Legitimation work in state cultural organizations: The case of Norway. International Journal of Cultural Policy 20(4): 456–470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levine, Lawrence. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lien, Marianne, Hilde Lidén, and Hallvard Vike (eds.). 2001. Likhetens paradokser: Antropologiske undersøkelser i det moderne Norge. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ljunggren, Jørn. 2015. Elitist egalitarianism: Negotiating identity in the Norwegian cultural elite. Sociology:1–16. doi: 10.1177/0038038515590755.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mangset, Per. 2012. Demokratisering av kulturen? Om sosial ulikhet i kulturbruk og -deltakelse. In TF-notat nr. 7/2012. Bø i Telemark: Telemarksforkning.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2013. En armlengdes avstand eller statens forlengede arm? Om armlengdesprinsippet i norsk og internasjonal kulturpolitikk. In TF-rapport nr. 314. Bø i Telemark: Telemarksforskning.

    Google Scholar 

  • McConachie, Bruce A. 1988. New York opera going, 1825–50: Creating an elite social ritual. American Music 6(2): 181–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDonnell, Terence E., and Steven J. Tepper. 2014. Culture in crisis: Deploying metaphor in defence of art. Poetics 43: 20–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MET. 2011. Annual Reports 2009–10 and 2010–11. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Opera.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2013. Annual Report 2012–2013. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Opera.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology 83(2): 340–363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moe, Hallvard. 2011. Defining public service beyond broadcasting: The legitimacy of different approaches. International Journal of Cultural Policy 17(1): 52–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • NNOB. 2010. Strategiplan for Den Norske Opera & Ballett 2010–2014. En årlig rullerende plan for perioden. Oslo: Den Norske Opera & Ballett.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2012. Årsrapport 2012. Oslo: Den norske opera og ballett.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2013. Årsrapport 2013. Oslo: Den norske opera og ballett.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Richard A. 1992. Understanding audience segmentation: From elite and mass to omnivore and univore. Poetics 21(1992): 243–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Richard A., and Roger M. Kern. 1996. Changing highbrow taste: From snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review 61(5): 900–907.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, Richard A., and Albert Simkus. 1992. How musical tastes mark occupational status groups. In Cultivating Differences. Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, ed. Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier, 152–186. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Powell, Walter W., and Paul J. DiMaggio. 1991. The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prop. 1 S (2013–2014). Proposisjon til Stortinget (forslag til stortingsvedtak). For budsjettåret 2014. Det Kongelige Kulturdepartement.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prop. 1 S (2014–2015). Proposisjon til Stortinget (forslag til stortingsvedtak). For budsjettåret 2015. Det kongelige kulturdepartement.

    Google Scholar 

  • Remlov, Tom. 2012. Å finne sin plass. En ny tid for europeiske kulturinstitusjoner. Samtiden 1: 92–99.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenlund, Lennart. 2009. Exploring the City With Bourdieu: Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s Theories and Methods to Study the Community. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røyseng, Sigrid. 2000. Operadebatten: kampen om kulturpolitisk legitimitet. In Rapportserien. Oslo: Norsk kulturråd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Santoro, Marco. 2010. Constructing an artistic field as a political project: Lessons from La Scala. Poetics 38(2010): 534–554.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skarpenes, Ove. 2007. Den “legitime kulturens” moralske forankring. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 48(4): 531–563.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skarpenes, Ove, and Rune Sakslind. 2010. Education and egalitarianism: The culture of the Norwegian middle class. The Sociological Review 58(2): 219–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • St.meld. nr. 10 (2011–2012). Kultur, inkludering og deltaking. Det kongelege kulturdepartement.

    Google Scholar 

  • Storey, John. 2003. The social life of opera. European Journal of Cultural Studies 6(5): 5–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ——— 2006. Inventing opera as art in nineteenth-century Manchester. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9(4): 435–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Larsen, H. (2016). Performing Legitimacy as Civil Opera Houses. In: Performing Legitimacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31047-3_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31047-3_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31046-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31047-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics