Department of Media Studies

Članek obravnava skozi zgodovinskoantropološko in socialnoantropološko perspektivo nekatere aktualne razmere v slovenski znanosti (kot administrativno homogeniziranem in institucionaliziranem polju), trende v znanstveni politiki in partikularne probleme v njunem družbenem statusu, za katere se zdi, da postajajo izjema, ki potrjuje pravilo. Avtor na podlagi pisnih gradiv in terenske izkušnje poimenuje in analizira nekaj šokantnih in zaskrbljujočih ideoloških mitov, iluzij, zmot, zablod in delirijev, ki zaposlujejo ne le državno-upravljavske mentalitete v zvezi s področjem administriranja znanosti, pač pa tudi tistih, ki družbeno domeno visokega šolstva, znanosti in akademske kulture naseljujejo.

This article explores the role, practices and strategies of opera houses located in specific multiethnic areas of the northeastern Adriatic and of the Austrian province of Carinthia in representing the multicultural social structure of their cities, environments, regions and national settings. Before giving a brief ethnographic account of what kind of specificity and particularity might have been reserved for the opera companies located in the selected multiethnic regions, some conceptual remarks on how the contemporary opera house is a culturally performed institution and a socially enacted venue are elaborated upon. Further, it is demonstrated by using an ethnographic approach, how three opera companies located in multiethnic areas with officially-acknowledged minority groups, such as those in Klagenfurt (Austria), Trieste (Italy) and Rijeka (Croatia), represent the multicultural status of their towns and regions. Finally, in comparison to these three cases, a description of two opera companies, in Maribor (Slovenia) and Graz (Austria), are presented as good examples of how a musical theatre can openly communicate with multiethnic audiences and the public.

This article investigates the social and cultural facets of a very unusual operatic project from Belgrade, Serbia, related to the constitution of the Opera and Theatre Madlenianum, a private opera house officially founded in 1997 and opened in 2005 by Madlena Zepter as its single patron and donor. Here we discuss the reasons why a rich individual would build, hold and run her own opera house and theatre in these times when the tradition of such acts of giving by wealthy and powerful people seems to be more or less a far distant echo of previous centuries, if not almost an entirely extinct cultural practice. To better understand this contemporary operatic endowment, a rough historical outline of opera patronage throughout the centuries will be offered. Besides patronage studies, incorporated with the significant definitional contributions of some sociologists, historians, economists and musicologists, this interpretation brings into discussion certain interesting academic output, initially the anthropological about gastarbeiters and elites, and further on from the vast interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of gift theory, represented here through its two fundamental conceptual aporias, reciprocity and generosity. The conclusion which is made is that Madlena Zepter's Madlenianum is a parasitical gift generating, paradoxically, her person of interests (reciprocity) through her philanthropic performances of disinterestedness for the Serbian nation (generosity), and by mixing these two contrasting identities successfully transforming economic capital into social, cultural and symbolic capital. More concretely, opera is used here as a personalised social manifest and as an ultimately visible seal on one's philanthropy, lifestyle and money.

This article proposes a ritualistic approach to opera in the historical case of the mid-eighteenth-century Margravial Opera House in Bavarian Bayreuth to argue that court opera can be understood as a variety of social showcase. In this view, court opera is a specific form of communication through which opera established the various types of relationship between itself and the social worlds in which, and for which, it was created. By referring to the operatic rituals under the leadership and sponsorship of Wilhelmina of Bayreuth and her husband Frederick, it will be established how the Bayreuth's ruling couple used opera for several social and political purposes. As both genre and institution, the margravial opera production is interpreted by the analytical models of anthropologists of ritual and theatre, like Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Ma-urice Bloch, Stanley Tambiah, Catherine Bell, employing their ritual theory, especially Turner's concept of a " hall of magic mirrors " .

That opera was and can still be a great source of social status, prestige, cultural and symbolic capital, is already quite well known. That it can play such a role successfully in an utterly specific and intricate manner, which today seems entirely anachronistic and obsolete, is rarer to find. One such example notorious for remaining a class in itself is connected to the Mantua opera house called Teatro Sociale, which is privately owned by the heirs of the original box-holders who built the theatre in 1822, thus in a quite different Zeitgeist than today. Since then, there have been many political and social changes for the city of Mantua, which has resulted in a noticeable transformation of just one province of a much larger foreign-domineering monarchy over the patriotic unification with other Italian lands to the democratic membership within the Republic of Italy. The renowned opera house of Mantua, a private institution with public purpose, has managed through all those years of massive social change to remain untouched by one single element; that is its box-holders never surrendered their boxes to the Municipality or the State. It is semi-privately managed by the heirs who have until recently administered it as if it were still the 1800s. With this article, we attempt to reveal the historical context and social particularities that help explain that social world of a specific cultural tradition that have produced and reproduced such endurable box-holding practices over time in a city where possessing the opera house was and remains more important than attending it. This analysis is done on the basis of the social status theories of Max Weber, Talcott Parsons and Pierre Bourdieu, but particularly on the basis of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, disposition, distinction and reproduction. Hopefully, through analysis it is easier to understand the “anachronistic” story of the tenacious and self-willed Mantuan box-holders, including a complex and historically conditioned situation showing that attending the opera house is one thing, but to own it is something else entirely.

The paper examines some mythical aspects of social representations of opera, and is supported by examples from the Slovenian operatic environment. The argumentation rests on three key premises: firstly, considering the mass of words and images which surround the opera phenomenon in public spheres, it is strange that there is a relatively small number of interpretations of the opera which would surpass the canonised notions, such as opera as a work of art, as heavenly music, as " high culture " , as a phantasmagoric world, and, particularly, as a " national thing " , etc. The world of production of modern mythologies within the context of the contemporary westernised societies likes to connect the operatic arena with some " mythical " ritualisation of " national societies " , which all have placed the opera on an incontestable pedestal of " representative art " , " elite culture " or " national tradition ". Secondly, it is argued that the usage of myth in opera historically shows a specific continuity of operatic appropriation of mythological material which served and still serves as an example how to reinvent traditions for the construction of new modern myths. Thirdly, if we take opera as a social practice then we could acknowledge also that opera as a social phenomenon creates an interesting segment of " mythologisation " of society, which is most evident in images of myths, produced by opera repertoires, and in images of " typical " institu-tionalised theatrical life, extensively spread in public and surrounded by indisputable and obstinate stereotypes about opera in society. The article is an attempt to tackle the anthropology of reading of the myth structures and the social aspects of opera imaginaire.

COMPOSERS AND AUDIENCES BETWEEN HIGH AND POPULAR CULTURE: TOWARDS A THEORY AND HISTORY OF SOCIAL RECEPTION OF OPERA

The article is based on a reflexive outline of some examples of the social reception of opera as high, popular and folk culture. The intercession on behalf of the perceiving opera as something exclusively elite and prestigious is still so strong and self-evident, that a slim scientific debate was needed to rationalise it. Thus, the main goal of the analysis is to show, how the notion of the opera as high as well as popular culture represents a specific sociohistorical and ideological construction with the long-term consequences for the pertinent social reception of this phenomenon. Four models of the social reception of opera are exemplified: 1) Mozart, hybridism and divergent culture; 2) Wagner, avantgardism and high culture; 3) Meyerbeer, commercialism and popular culture; 4) Verdi, belcantism and people’s culture. These examples indicate that opera was determined, through its history, by very different forms and conceptions of its social reception and not only by single one, usually stereotyped by elitist on the one hand or populist on the other.

This paper explores the role of alpine skiing in Slovenian culture and society by focusing on the construction and maintenance of a sporting national story. The research, which is based on discourse analysis and the ethnographic method, suggests that in Slovenia, alpine skiing, with its natural sceneries, amateurish background, sporting events, media attention and national heroes, is one of the main sports arenas in which the Slovenian nation-imagining, nationalism and national identity have been exercised throughout the twentieth century. The national importance of alpine skiing was further confirmed after Slovenia's secession from Yugoslavia. The findings also suggest that the media, especially television, perpetuated the myth of skiing as the Slovenian national sport and as an autochthonous Slovenian sporting practice.

This paper explores the role of alpine skiing in Slovenian culture and society by taking into consideration how sports and ideas of nation and nationhood are intertwined. The analysis, which is based on historical evidence and ethnographic data, suggests that in Slovenia, alpine skiing, with its natural sceneries, amateurish background, sporting events, media attention and national heroes, is one of the main sports arenas in which the Slovenian nation-imagining, nationalism and national identity have been exercised throughout the twentieth century.

Adaptability is the key word when referring to the social history of opera, its institutions, its protagonists, its sponsors, its audiences and publics. This paper intends to illuminate only a limited number of certain historical aspects of opera’s social life in terms of its publics, audiences, consumers, appreciators and supporters. Opera’s social power has been for centuries in service to legitimate the power of authorities, to ensure the prestige of elites, and to heat the passion of masses. By referring to relevant literature and illustrative examples, it will be established at the end of this article that the element that ensured opera’s success and long survival was and remains its adaptability to whatever historical contexts, social conditions, economic situations, political regimes and cultural milieus surrounded it.

This article examines the historical constitution and construction of prima donna, probably the most intrinsic opera’s institution expanding from the end of the sixteenth century till today. Coming from the post-Renaissance courtesan to the professional artist of the Baroque and Classical era, from the bel canto madwoman to the modernist crying diva, from the helpless victim of traditional patriarchy to the powerful heroine of political emancipation, from the early-Romanticist alpine virgin to the late-Romanticist national siren, from the early-twentieth century recording angel to the mid-twentieth-century prima donna assoluta, from the post-war goddess to the late-twentieth century global media star, from the vernacular songstress of socialistic local peripheries to the post-socialist foreign favourite and migrating queen (here with special focus on the cultural production of prima donna in Slovenia), and from the late-capitalistic singing commodity to the post-national diva, the opera’s prima donna has experienced numerous cultural transformations and commodifications. Her idea was determined by paradigms and concepts of absence and replaceability in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of human nature and body, sexuality and gender, character and costume in the eighteenth century, of aura and fetish in the nineteenth century, and of identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To conclude, even though she has lost a lot of past mystique, grandomania and phantasmagoria, her institution continues to rule the opera’s world.