The Most Musical Part of the Land: Opera-going in Northern England in the 1920s

During the 1920s, though it may surprise us today, opera sat squarely in that newfangled thing known as the middlebrow. Although there were debates about whether opera could ever be properly ‘British’, it drew enthusiastic audiences from across the class spectrum and was accepted as integral to the mainstream entertainment ecology.

Alexandra Wilson, former Professor of Music and Cultural History at Oxford Brookes University, traced the British relationship with opera in the 1920s largely through the lens of activity in London. In this talk she focused on the north of England. Even though there were no full-time opera companies in the north during this period, the idea that northerners were more musical than southerners was much discussed, and northern cities were particularly important staging posts for touring opera companies.

She discussed the touring patterns, repertoire, performance standards, attitudes towards singers, performances beyond conventional theatrical spaces, and plans to establish regional opera houses. Exploring why cities such as Leeds were particularly receptive to opera, she demonstrated that opera was thriving in the north half a century before the establishment of Opera North.

Formerly Professor of Music and Cultural History at Oxford Brookes University, Alexandra Wilson is now a freelance arts writer and author. She holds a non-stipendiary Senior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has written extensively on Italian opera and is the author of three books on Puccini. Her more recent publications on opera in British culture over the last century include Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain (OUP, 2019) and Someone Else’s Music: Opera and the British (OUP, 2025). Her journalism has appeared in publications including BBC Music Magazine, BBC History Magazine, Opera, The Critic and Engelsberg Ideas, and she writes programme essays for most of the UK's leading opera companies and can be heard regularly on BBC Radio 3.