That 1903 Opera Crowd

In my review of Knoxville Opera's Romeo et Juliette in this week's issue of Metro Pulse ("Knoxville Opera Reaches Out to a New Audience With 'Romeo et Juliette'"), I remarked about the visible changes in the Knoxville Opera demographic. Although I clearly missed my chance to comment on individual fashions of audience members or overheard remarks and behavior, the history of opera reportage has been quite full of such entertainments. In a recent post by the music writer Alex Ross in his blog The Rest Is Noise, he offers up an example from those golden days of journalism--December, 1903, and a New York Times account of the first Parsifal outside of Bayreuth at the society-driven old Metropolitan Opera where hats were very important. Click on the link to Ross' blog and revisit those amusing days of yore.