Opera, Excess, and the discourse of Luxury in eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

It might seem a singularly pointless exercise to embark on a consideration of opera and the notion of luxury. Opera is, in common parlance, a “luxury” item, and there is no question that the connection between opera and luxury was made in the eighteenth century: to cite but two examples, in 1738, the Daily Post denounced “luxury at the opera,” while in 1742, the New Dunciad called it “the harlot-form soft sliding by” and commented on the genre’s “luxurious and effeminating sounds.” Modern commentaries on eighteenth-century opera which consider this connection have tended to focus on certain words within such texts – “effeminacy,” “foreign-ness,” or “exotic” – but do not often acknowledge that the overall discourse is not that of theatre criticism, but is the language of the luxury debates which centred on what such “excess” meant for trade, for society, and for Britain. This article considers the position of opera in these debates, and argues that despite the negative tone of much of the commentary, it had little effect on opera itself; indeed, it was in fact essential to its promotion to be thought luxurious.