New Book by History Department Alumni Markian Prokopovych

October 1, 2014

In the Public Eye: The Budapest Opera House, The Audience and the Press, 1884-1918 (Böhlau 2014)

During the 1884 inauguration of the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest, political elites staged a gala concert in the auditorium while the angry crowd, excluded from this ceremony, demonstrated on the street. In 1917, the crowds queuing to a Béla Bartók premiere needed to be forcibly held back. The book follows the history of the contested institution through a series of scandals, public protests, repertoire controversies and their representation in the urban press of the time. Such conflicts often led to larger issues that concerned the Opera House as a music institution, the birth of the modern public sphere and the modern audience. Thereby, the book calls for a critical rethinking of the cultural history of Budapest and Hungary in the late Habsburg Monarchy.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Public-Eye-Musikkultur-Europaischer-Metropolen/dp/320577941X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411741264&sr=1-2

Share