It's time for working class audiences to reclaim opera

I went to the opera for the first time when I was 14, when Madame Butterfly came to the Theatre Royal in Glasgow. I was warned it would be hours of boring Italian tragedy. But I got dressed up, kept an open mind — and was captivated. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to see performances at the Royal Opera House in London and even the Met in New York. Yet every time I tell someone I love opera, I’m met with the same reaction: “Is it not a bit posh?”

That stereotype is exactly the problem. Opera has been successfully rebranded as something exclusive, a pastime for the wealthy few. Tickets, dress codes, and overpriced interval wine all feed into the myth that opera was never for the ordinary person.

Here's the thing: it hasn't always been like this.

In fact, opera once had deep roots in working class culture. In the aftermath of the First World War, theatre producer Lilian Baylis capped Old Vic opera tickets at no more than the price of a pint of beer. Filling out the theatre, night-after-night. In the 1930s, a similar picture emerged when conductor John Barbirolli observed that working people were filling the pits on company tours, while wealthier audiences stayed away. In 1946, the San Carlo company even toured Butlin's holiday camps. It was far from being alien, opera was part of a working-class life.

The irony is that the elite once dismissed opera as too popular and criticised it for not being intellectually stimulating. Now, cultural gatekeepers patronisingly insist opera is “too complex” for ordinary audiences, as if working-class people can’t grasp beauty unless it comes with a pie at half-time.

That’s the real elitism - to suggest that only certain classes deserve access to art. Opera was, less than a century ago, enjoyed and attended by working class audiences. To suggest otherwise is to erase history and to entirely rebrand opera into an exclusive slice of culture - to be enjoyed only by the elite.