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- Title
Up Close and Personal: Opera and Television Broadcasting in the 1950s.
- Authors
WARD-GRIFFIN, DANIELLE
- Abstract
This article examines early pedagogical experiments in opera on television that were meant to attract new audiences in the 1950s. The aesthetics of early television have often been thought to run contrary to opera, particularly in its grander iterations, but I argue that television producers capitalized upon the traits of early television to personalize opera, both on and off screen. Comparing two NBC pedagogical initiatives—a 1958 Omnibus program starring Leonard Bernstein and the 1956–57 visits of the NBC Opera Company to Saint Mary's College (South Bend, Indiana)—I explore how these efforts were meant to approximate the opera fan's experience as well as prepare audience members to enter the opera house. Ultimately, although opera on television failed to secure a strong foothold in the 1950s, it helped to re-envision the ways in which American audiences could relate to the art form and set the terms for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcasts today.
- Subjects
TELEVISION broadcasting; TELEVISION producers &; directors; BERNSTEIN, Leonard, 1918-1990; METROPOLITAN Opera (New York, N.Y.); NATIONAL Broadcasting Co. Inc.
- Publication
Journal of the Society for American Music, 2019, Vol 13, Issue 2, p216
- ISSN
1752-1963
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S1752196319000087