Opera beyond the Opera: Operatic Influence and Four Popular Performance Genres between 1770 and 1914

Abstract During the long nineteenth century, operatic narratives, music and performance styles had a rich secondary life in fantoccini puppet shows, ballet, tableaux vivants and magic lantern shows. The intersection of ballet with opera is well known, but operatic material was also adapted by these other genres that, in turn, were often chosen as the vehicle for discrete sequences within operas. Opera thus achieved a presence in many genres during the century that only disappeared as it neared the twentieth. This cross-pollination disturbs the categorizations of high and low art, and challenges the assumption that street artforms only engaged with opera on parodic or satirical levels. The article contextualizes this cross-pollination within society’s acceleration towards mass-literacy in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Britain’s performance culture shifted to reflect increased literacy, new stage languages emerged in each of these genres along with innovations in storytelling, and this separated them from the proto-literate traditions which had facilitated their cross-pollination in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Exemplifying Kress and Leeuven’s interpretation of advanced literacy as multi-modal, where media other than text shape communication, performances became more instrumentally-supported, more visual, faster paced, physically active and audience comprehension became more instant. Older styles of external interpreters and heavy expositions came to an end. In the process, opera lost a valuable conduit in other performance genres.