Daniel Snowman - The Gilded Stage: The Social History of Opera

While researching and writing this book, I was able to try out some of my emerging ideas through a number of broadcasts, lectures and articles. For BBC Radio 3, I presented a series of six features for which I recorded interviews with a number of experts on opera history in Britain and around the world, and was also able to mine invaluable seams from the sound archives of the BBC and the New York Metropolitan Opera. Some of this material has helped enrich the book and I am grateful to my producer, Kate Bolton, for her help as we prepared these programmes together. My thanks, too, to the editor of Opera Now, Ashutosh Khandekar, who kindly invited me to write a series of articles, and nuggets from these, too, have found their way into what follows. I am also grateful to Chatto & Windus for permission to adapt and re-present brief passages derived from material previously published in my book The Hitler Emigrs.

Much of the research for The Gilded Stage was undertaken in London. As a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Historical Research (London University), I had access to all the resources of the IHR and, indeed, the entire University of London library system, while I also worked in the British Library and in the archive collections of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Londons Theatre Museum. My thanks to all concerned. I have learned much, too, from many visits to opera in other parts of Britain and, over the years, to most of the worlds great opera centres where I have often had the pleasure of meeting scholars, archivists and librarians as well as managers, press officers and artists, all of whom have generously helped with my researches and pointed me in useful directions for further study. While working on this book, my operatic peregrinations were also enriched by the opportunity to lead some thirty opera tours for companies such as Martin Randall Ltd, Cox & Kings and others with whom it has always been a privilege and a pleasure to work.

Countless conversations, email exchanges and interviews (some of them recorded) with friends and colleagues in Britain and around the world have proved invaluable, and I am grateful for instruction, help and advice from the following: Julian Anderson, Rosamund Bartlett, Tim Blanning, John Brewer, Stephen A. Brown, Peter Burke, Sir David Cannadine, Margaret Carson, Michael Chance, Peter E. Clark, David Coke, Roger Covell, Julia Creed, Stephen Dee, Gabriele Dotto, Katharine Ellis, Iain Fenlon, Francesca Franchi, Bernard Greenberg, Alison and David Gyger, Ulrike Hessler, Raymond Holden, Eric Homberger, Geoffrey Hosking, Alfred Hubay, Robert D. Hume, James H. Johnson, Paula Kaplan, Thena Kendall, Helene Lindroth, Hugh Macpherson, Dennis Marks, Judith Milhous, Edward Morgan, Gary Murphy, Ji Nekvasil, Moffatt Oxenbould, Roger Parker, Nicholas Payne, Maurice Pearton, John Pennino, Graham Pont, Sir Curtis Price, Therese Radic, Ivan Ruml, Jan Spacek, Donald Sassoon, Marc Scorca, Elizabeth Silsbury, Somtow Sucharitkul, Gerhard Strassgschwandtner, Jula Szuster, Tanya Tintner, Owen Toller, James Torniainen, Robert Tuggle, Walter Wells, Frank Whitford, Rupert Wilkinson and Hin-Yan Wong. Some of these kindly read through various sections of my text, while Roger Parker (to whom special thanks) was good enough to read and check the entire manuscript. All this expert scrutiny has, I hope, helped save me from too many egregious mistakes.