La Faniata
October 25, 2021

How Russian opera-lovers invented a modern music fan

Some Romantic-era opera listeners felt that their own listening practices could be just as emo­tionally true as the art itself. These listeners didn’t want to be stuffed shirts snarking over the music reviews: they wanted to fall in love with the music, be the music, be the characters, be the singers, and be enflamed by opera to the depths of their souls - Lit Hub writes introducing Dr. Anna Fishzon’s eye-opening book 'Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siècle Russia' which concen­trates on 19th-century Russian opera soci­ety but illuminates trends in opera and art all over Europe. "Fishzon tells amazing stories of 19th-century fans who wrote scary fan letters to opera stars and stood in ticket lines for days, till they fainted... Critics said that the new fans were vulgar, hysterical, immature, and ignorant".