Projects / Programmes
Opera Audience in Slovenia: An Anthropological Research of the Nation's Cultural Capital
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.03.02 |
Humanities |
Anthropology |
Social and cultural anthropology |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| S220 |
Social sciences |
Cultural anthropology, ethnology |
opera audience, cultural capital, national identity, bourgeois culture, urbanity, anthropology, cultural history, Slovenia
Researchers (1)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
21518 |
PhD Vlado Kotnik |
Culturology |
Head |
2007 - 2008 |
0 |
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The central idea of the project comes from the presumption, which finds its justification in the history of European cultures, that the opera culture and its social reception are in culturally and intellectually well developed social environments usually perceived as a reliable barometer of social development, refinement and urbanity of a particular place, city, region or country. The social significance of opera audience for constituting, reproducing and socialising European bourgeois culture is not negligible. This particularly stands as evidence from the 19th century on when opera had become an urban and relatively well “consumed” art of the middle class. As an artistic genre, it is from the period of romanticism and national awakening, treated as the national art, which is able to attract “spontaneous” national identification of members of its audience. Accordingly, in the 19th and 20th centuries, opera had become the perceivable socialisational norm of bourgeois life, culturally minded and sophisticated bourgeoisie, the bearer of cultural goods and the embodiment of the bourgeois values, morals, civilities and aesthetics. Thus, opera audience represents an important, vital and active part of every developed national cultural history. Although in Slovenia opera audience remains unexplored, till now, and entirely unrecognised as potential cultural capital of the nation, it can be stated that from the end of the 19th century opera, with its institutions and activities, was and tried to be a kind of the entrance ticket of the Slovenians for admitting to the association of cultural nations.
The proposed project therefore deals with the social and cultural history of opera audiences and with the reception history of specific cultural goods, particularly focusing on the significance, the structure, the frequency and the social recruitments of opera audiences and opera goers as visible phenomenon with the important role in constituting and accompanying some identity processes of Slovenian cultural and ethnical territory from the middle of the 19th century till today. In selective thematic parts, the research will necessarily employ the understanding of general national art and music history as well as local, regional and national political and economical sharing histories. The project will in its final instance also show some interregional and multicultural aspects and contacts between different national environments (for instance, the significance of neighbouring opera centres like Austria’s Graz, Klagenfurt or even Vienna, then Italy’s Trieste and Venice as world-famous opera metropolises, also near Croatia’s Rijeka and Zagreb) and their impact on Slovenian opera houses’ functioning as well as on Slovenian audiences’ recruitments and opera entering practices. This project will employ a set of anthropological methods (fieldwork, making ethnography), work with archives as well as with other analytical procedures from different social sciences and humanities (semiotic analysis, discourse analysis, statistics).
As this is a basic research project, we expect that it will enable the implementation of our scientific findings into the broader context of social development planning and national culture policy. The proposed research will also consider the aspect of current and future development of opera audience management and its possible applications in Slovenia. We believe that our research will contribute (on the data base level) to the enrichment of national intellectual culture as well as to the visibility of Slovenian cultural goods within trans-national society. It is also expected that the results of our project will be useful for foreign researchers and institutions from neighbouring and other national milieus.
Significance for science
The results of the research which cannot be in details and in all complexity presented in this report but anyway present an important conceptual and analytical break-through and shift from the past fantasmagorical views on opera phenomenon and its audiences in Slovenia to more reflexive approach. The analysis of the relationship between standardised historical contexts and current processes of opera audiences’ recruitments and frequencies in Slovenia, so, the relation between archives and fieldwork, is an original approach to opera audience’s studies in the Slovenian tradition of cultural studies as well as in the anthropological and musicological science. Thus this project widens the classical repertoire of topics in these disciplines. Due to the fact that the research examines in details some previous Slovenian evaluations and works on opera audiences and performs a precise longitudinal analysis of repertoires and programs of both Slovenian opera houses, the results of this analysis should be crucial for understanding the repertoires as very concrete producers of imagined consuming community, but also as material transmitters of specific cultural goods. Our anthropological research provides fresh knowledge that sheds new light on opera audiences’ practices. However, since the research is significantly connected with migrational aspects of the Slovenian opera audiences too, the results are useful not only for the Slovenian opera houses but abroad as well.
Significance for the country
The results which will be approppriatelly presented in public in the near future, should be taken as knowledge support for organising and reflecting identity policies in Slovenia in the field of cultural and social development, here the cultural policy is particularly in mind; the cultural policy should be in Slovenia even more differentiated and should follow successfull models and good practices established abroad. Also, our findings based on historical analysis as well as ethnographic experiences should be useful material for cultural management, art directors, opera programs’ projection, and for other planners and producers of cultural offers and services of Slovenian cultural institutions. By comparing past (historical analysis of repertoires) and present (carrying out anthropological fieldwork) perspectives and situations, the research provides results which should be influential for the development and for the recognition of the relevance of the socio-economic aspect of opera art producing. The research could be therefore also of great help in developing the so-called art management, which is very developed and recognised domain abroad and also importantly related to the domain of audiences and consumers of cultural goods, whereas in Slovenia art and opera audience management are still in their infancy. As opera and its audience in Slovenia are no doubt a recognised facet of the cultural heritage of the Republic of Slovenia, the author of this project cherishes a legitimate hope that the research contributes to the preservation and the promotion of the cultural heritage of the Republic of Slovenia too.
Most important scientific results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
