Opera in the second city: negotiating national operatic identities in and around 1920s Chicago

This dissertation studies opera’s role as a perceived indicator of civic and national progress in the 1920s. Opera was a recognizable point of public interest throughout the decade, and Chicago’s operatic institutions actively promoted the genre’s importance to their city’s highly publicized growth. Chicago’s Civic Opera Company (192–1932), Ravinia Opera (1912–1934), Redpath-Chicago Chautauqua Bureau (1912–1928), South Side Opera Company (1920–1922), Fortnightly Club (1873–), and American Opera Society (1922–) each sought to maintain opera’s relevance for public audiences while also touting Chicago’s status as a national cultural center. Some of these institutions also took their efforts outside of city limits, actively connecting the production of opera to national debates regarding the proper language of operatic performances and discussions of the genre’s effects on the cultural lives of attendees. All the while, operatic productions intersected with period social issues—including widening class disparities, growing racial inequities, changing women’s opportunities, and competing national identities—and intermingled with elements of popular culture. The dissertation first connects the ways that the city’s opera companies and advocates each worked to promote interest in operatic productions and then analyzes how these efforts fed into larger ideas regarding opera’s significance for audiences nationwide. Ultimately, opera in Chicago makes for an ideal case through which to understand opera’s place in American musical life, and the cases presented in this dissertation speak to opera’s lingering presence within perceptions of a national cultural identity.