More about opera fans than opera itself. The most interesting section is the chapter about the authors attendance at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival directors attempts to downplay the antisemitism inherent in Wagner's operas is discussed along with the long history of racism and sexism in many opera companies.
But it is not all gloom an doom. there are many humorous passages about the obsessiveness of many fans. Avidly Reads Opera is recommended for opera and classical music enthusiasts.

I learned so much about opera reading this book, which was exactly the idea! I think it will be a sleeper hit on our shelves - it meets a need, but not a very big one. Still well worth owning.

This is the kind of writing I adore - engaged, informative, passionate, and invitational. Kinney wants to share how opera transformed her life (artistically, physically) and she wants to share her love of it with as many people as possible. The most interesting people in the world, to me, are those who truly love something and I always want to hear more from them - and every word in this book is infused with her love for opera. Maybe I'll get those opera tickets now.

This is a very enjoyable short book about the appreciation of opera. Told in five acts, with an intermission, along with a listening guide available on the author's website, the book reads more like a series of essays, with the author telling how opera affected her life (she could never truly hear music before one lifechanging opera experience), acknowledging the endemic problematic nature of opera (often classist, racist, misogynistic, etc.), and placing opera in popular culture context.

The book covers everything from dress code--dress for comfort--to Trumpism. AVIDLY READS OPERA is a must-read for opera fans and anyone who is interested in opera but thinks it's too esoteric for them (because it isn't). Unlike the author, I've been unable to enjoy livestreamed opera; the theatre aspect is too much of the experience for me. Reading this book was the perfect preparation for the my return to opera after a nearly two-year break. #AvidlyReadsOpera #NetGalley

You may remember my post enthusing over enjoying so many operas that The Met offered for free streaming during the pandemic. Since that post, I watched many more. A quick count shows 96 different operas I watched during that time, not counting several I watched more than once. That's a lot of opera! Prior to that, I'd only seen one opera in person (during my college years at IU) and watched The Ring Cycle on PBS TV several years ago with Daughter #3.

So when I saw "Avidly Reads Opera" on NetGalley, I eagerly requested it. A book about opera, how fun! And under 200 pages -- just the right length for such a topic.

Author Alison Kinney is 40 but seems much younger, and is, of course, an opera fan. I enjoyed recognizing the names of various operas I'm now familiar with, thanks to The Met's streams. An interesting observation: "frisky babies enjoy being walked to the beat of the children's march from Carmen ... it's just what they'd ask for, if they had language. Likewise, babies enjoy being waltzed to the Brindisi, the joyous drinking song from La Traviata, as do I."

Opera helps us to "broaden our aesthetic horizons, (embracing) the difficult and strange."

But very quickly, I learned that this book was not for me. Just a few pages in, I read that Alison's life "got a little complicated. I stopped writing. Trump was elected and started burning down the world, and before I knew it, 2020 had rolled in." A large portion of the book is devoted to President Trump and the author's hatred toward him. Apparently, he used an opera song at some points in his campaign (although I attended two rallies and never heard it, and I would have noticed it since that is kind of "my thing"). "Let's be offended by Trump's use of opera, but not because he failed an arbitrary culture test. Rather, because of all the suffering and death he sowed." Wow. I hope Alison is really enjoying the idyllic tenure of Joe Biden. No suffering or death there, amirite?

She continues in this vein: "Right-wing terrorists also invoked 'Let freedom ring' to fight against life-saving pandemic protections; on January 6, 2021, they stormed the Capitol in an insurrection incited by Trump." She defines the former President as a "pussy-grabbing rapist." I am not making this up. And all this in an already-short book about ... opera? It really reads more like a liberal arts college student's paper. I see this is published by New York University Press, which probably pretty much explains how it made it into print. There are no accolades to former Governor Cuomo here, but they would fit right in.

Kinney despairs over a performance of "Die Meistersinger" "in the Midwestern US whose directors give the audience German flags to wave." THE HORRORS! See, to me this would be fun. She discusses a protest she attended "where police used unnecessary force." She is heartened by the people in Wagner's Venusberg, which she sees as "broke, undocumented, Black, queer, femme, disabled, and all vulnerable to institutions that dehumanize them." Oh my. In my "Meistersinger" viewings, those descriptors never came to mind.

While in an opera performance, she finds herself "tallying all the 'good' fans whose beliefs -- and struggles with the composer (in this case, Wagner) -- dovetailed with mine." And that, for me, sums up liberals like Alison. Those who agree with them are "good." Those of us who don't are just bad people. Conservatives, in contrast, tend to see liberals not as bad people but simply as misguided. I did appreciate the author laying it out as she sees it here.

I loved the proposed topic of this book, but found the execution excruciating.

Over the last few years I have taken a number of music history classes. One of them touched on opera but that was just a brief introduction. So, I was very interested in reading this title. It did not disappoint.

The author is an unabashed fan of opera. She draws the reader in immediately with an account of her reaction to a death in one of the first operas that she saw. Ms. Kinney then tells readers that this is not a spoiler for her book as people usually die in them.

The author relates her experience in viewing an opera production at Attica State Prison. This clearly makes the point that the world of opera is not only for the elite.

Ms. Kinney is an unabashed fan who has learned a lot about what might be her favorite subject. She engagingly introduces readers to her experiences, knowledge and enthusiasm for the genre.

I highly recommend this one for both novice and seasoned people who want to engage with this art form.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

A book about the experience of and love for opera. Well-received! It was a joy to be led through prisons, deep space, Bavarian castles, the Supreme Court, and the heights and depths of opera fandom by such a passionate and eager guide. As a music professor, I expected to cover a lot of old ground, but Kinney deftly wove outside research and personal experience together to create a fresh love letter to an old art form.

The questions the book tries to answer, “why and what is opera,” are as diverse as opera fans themselves. Kinney invites the reader into the mind of opera lovers everywhere, her irreverent tone making sections of the book feel as much like a bar-side diatribe as a thoroughly researched introduction to a centuries-old genre. But that’s what opera does: the duality of opera - simultaneously elitist/academic and populist/diverse - is a major theme of the work. Opera is both a tool of the oppressor and the oppressed. Buffa and seria coexist. It contains the courtly and the corporate, the elitist and the populist, a mirror of reality and an escape from the same.

These contradictions are most evident in opera’s most polarizing figure, Richard Wagner, a subject that yielded the richest sections of the book, the Interlude and Act 5. What do we do with a rancorous anti-Semite who wrote music transcendent enough to inspire Ludwig II’s castle-building obsession? Kinney sums Wagner up thus: “a genius and a jackass in equal measure.” Apt. “Opera,” she says, “has facilitated terror and violence, daring us to quit it. It’s also inspired healing, hope, empathy, outrage, and dissent.” This is antinomy. These viewpoints are irreconcilable but are both true.

The Wagnerian sections were the most effective for me because they were largely free of the rumination of previous chapters, Kinney explaining by example instead of lecture. This may be a personal preference, but the rest of the book could have benefitted from more illustrations and fewer explanations. I read a few too many declarations about what “art” is or what the “best” opera audiences are like. I was only on page ten when I found a single paragraph that transitioned from “what is opera” to a list of grievances about contemporary opera companies to some vague hopes for opera’s future. The author’s perspective was welcome, just a bit heavy-handed.

Toward the end of the book, Kinney recounts Philip Glass reflecting on his audience, questioning whether opera mattered if concertgoers already agree with you. I had a similar question about this book: who is the audience? Opera lovers? The opera-unchurched? Liberal millennials in 2021? Kinney states clearly that she is “writing to welcome new fans.” Despite her zeal, this book may be a difficult entry point for those without some experience with opera literature and practice. I suspect her purpose may be broader than she lets on, though. Opera love involves inclusion, community, and connection. This book is a testament to each of those things, for old and new audiences alike. So while I could have done with fewer hot takes, this is a book about opera, and opera favors the bold. In the end, this book is a respectable effort toward demystifying opera, inviting long-time fans to a new appreciation and cautious inductees to a seat in the box.