John Baron's mammoth work chronicles the presentation of concert music in New Orleans during the nineteenth century. This volume presents a wealth of primary source research conducted in the city's multiple archives. In more than five hundred pages, Baron considers New Orleans musical life in multiple ways, providing incredible insight into the performance of European orchestral music and opera in one of the United States’ most musically important cities. In his preface, Baron is careful to note the limits on his study: he covers only “classical” concerts, including opera, presented during the nineteenth century, as well as the musicians, venues, and institutions engaged in presenting this music to the public.

This thick volume is divided into two books. The first book presents a topical history of the concert life of the city, covering venues, genres, personalities, and other issues; book 2 provides a chronological history of performances in New Orleans, beginning in 1805 and ending in 1897. The introduction provides a brief history of the city, noting the major divisions in the city's population. Given the significant scholarship on the demographic complexities of New Orleans, the introduction presents a too brief and vastly simplified overview of the different social groups that comprised the city's population, as well as the institutions that catered to them.Footnote ¹ Missing, in particular, is a detailed examination of the relationship between English-speaking and French-speaking populations, a topic that remains underexplored throughout the book. In contrast, although Baron alludes only briefly in the introduction to the racial complexities of the city, his discussion of the topic in chapter 4 makes it one of the most valuable chapters in the first section of this work.

The first part of book 1 concentrates on the institutions that presented music, specific musical genres, and other topics that had a bearing on the musical life of the city. Focusing on concert venues, chapter 1 gives a sense of the expanding cultural life of New Orleans as the city grew during its pre–Civil War “Golden Age.” Historical lithographs of most of the major theaters, halls, and churches are included in an insert between chapters 1 and 2, along with the seating plans for the French Opera House. Unfortunately, this seating plan does not indicate which sections of the theater were designated for free people of color or for slaves—this practice was common for elite venues such as the Theatre d'Orleans and, later, the French Opera House and the St. Charles Theater, all of which advertised their segregated seating in the city's newspapers.

Chapter 2 covers the presentation of symphonic music and discusses the difficulty instrumental music faced in an opera-crazed city. Baron identifies the annual balls held during the winter months leading up to Carnival season as major venues for instrumental music. He largely ignores the orchestras maintained by all of the major theaters of the city, for which little evidence about repertory survives. Baron does discuss the presence of touring orchestras, such as the Jullien Orchestra, which performed a series of concerts in 1854 and the founding of the Classic Music Society in 1856, which also presented orchestral music to the city. During the Civil War the concert life in New Orleans foundered, recovering briefly in the early 1870s only to be undermined by the Long Depression, which began in 1873. Baron notes that the economic downturn not only affected symphonic music, it also took a toll on all of the city's theaters; by the time the economy recovered in the 1880s, many of the musicians who had helped make this city such a lively place in the pre-war years had left or died. The revival of concert life in the last decades of the century thus fell to a new group of musical personalities.

Chapter 3 examines the numerous concert series and concert societies in New Orleans, repeating some of the discussion that appeared in the previous chapter. The real value of this chapter is its exhaustive description of the five concert series presented by Gustave Collingnon's Classic Music Society between 1856 and 1861, as well as the two short series he presented in fall 1871 and spring 1872. The personnel and repertoire are given for each concert, followed by a listing of all of the works Collignon presented. Baron also describes the concerts presented by Eugene Prevost's L'Orphéon Français between 1888 and 1896, including what little information there is on repertoire. Finally, he includes a brief discussion of other musical societies, including those that catered to the German population. Chapter 5, which considers music education, is equally brief, given the limited information on private training, the dominant mode of musical education in New Orleans.

Baron also considers the role of race and gender in the city's musical life, and these chapters are the most valuable in the first section. Chapter 4, which considers the plight of people of color resident in New Orleans, is brief but important. Baron discusses the city's quadroon and octoroon balls; these balls allowed young women of color to form relationships with prominent men of the city. The plaçage system, which allowed white men to form common-law marriages with women of color, was protected by law, as were the women of color, who could not be disinherited by the man's “official” wife at his death. This institution has received some attention from historians, and so I was pleased to see discussion of the balls and acknowledgment of the role of music in this sexual commerce.Footnote ² Baron's discussion of the increasing discrimination against people of color as the “American” population of the city increased is also instructive.Footnote ³ Chapter 6 considers the prominent role women played in the musical life of New Orleans as performers, patrons, and supporters. Two of these women, Jeanne Franko and Marguerite Elie Samuel, are discussed in more detail in the second section of book 1, but this chapter places their contributions in relation to those of other women who were active in the city's musical life.

The second part of book 1 provides biographical as well as musical discussion of major “personalities” active in New Orleans. Baron includes discussion of the best-known New Orleans musicians, such as Ludivico Gabici, Eugène Prévost, and Theodore La Hache, but he also includes lesser known musicians, teachers, and musical advocates. The discussion of these figures is not always lengthy, but the information included (along with many photographs and lithographs) is invaluable, particularly for musical scholars conducting archival research in nineteenth-century New Orleans newspapers.

Book 2 provides a chronological account of concert activity in New Orleans, beginning in 1805 and ending in 1897, and it synthesizes the information presented in book 1. Although this narrative provides some additional context for these performances, it too often simply lists musical activities while providing little indication of their social context. That is unfortunate because the social context, particularly the complex social divisions, is one of the fascinating aspects of conducting research on music in New Orleans.

In many American cities during the nineteenth century, the audience was divided along class lines, with a single theater catering to an elite audience and a number of smaller theaters catering to working-class and, perhaps, lower-middle-class populations. In larger cities with ethnic enclaves, additional theaters also presented entertainment that catered to immigrant communities, although their position, along with that of the theaters catering to working-class populations, was often tenuous. New Orleans had some of these same divisions, but its audience was further divided between those who were affiliated with the English-speaking, mostly Protestant, population of U.S. citizens and those affiliated with the French-Creole-speaking population that had been resident in city before it was acquired by the United States.

Baron notes, obliquely, that the French Opera House and the St. Charles Theater were often in competition with each other, and he is right. John Davis, the proprietor of the Theatre d'Orleans, opened his theater to compete with the Camp Street Theater in 1819, and his son Pierre continued this rivalry with the English-language theaters, notably the St. Charles. These theaters both catered to elite audiences in the city, and reviews make it clear that the French-Creole-speaking population could be tempted across to the St. Charles Theater when prominent actors performed there. Similarly, the Theatre d'Orleans sought to attract an English-speaking audience by advertising regularly in the English-language newspapers and by selling libretti for each opera they staged. When the company performed vaudevilles, which they did often near the end of each season, advertising did not mention English translations for sale, which suggests that this entertainment was not intended to have a broad appeal.

Unfortunately, Baron's decision not to consider the broader theatrical scene in New Orleans means that he fails to account for the complex competition for an audience in that city. The Theatre d'Orleans, which offered sung theater, was in direct competition with the spoken drama offered at the St. Charles Theater. The St. Charles also had to take other theaters on the American side of the city into account. Until the late-1840s, the major competition came from other activities such as balls, concerts given at various halls, lectures, displays of curiosities, and, in the depths of the winter, at least one circus that took up permanent residence in the city. By the 1850s, additional halls, such as the ballroom maintained by the Freemasons, had opened, and the St. Charles also competed with the Gaiety Theater and the Amphitheater. The Amphitheater catered to a lower-class audience than those the Gaiety and the St. Charles sought to attract, but the increase in theatrical activity and entertainment venues generally on the American side indicates a shift in the cultural life of the city. I was hoping that this work would give me a better sense of how orchestral music fit into this complex entertainment world, but this context is all but ignored because of the book's narrow focus on instrumental concert life.

Similarly, there is no recognition of the many, many places instrumental music could be heard in the city beyond concerts. Dance music was present not only at the privately run balls that proliferated during the 1840s and 1850s, but also in the studios of a growing number of dance teachers who worked in both the French and American sectors of the city. Music was also a common feature at the city's cafés, which was where alcohol was sold. Baron warns the readers of the need to distinguish between concert halls and concert saloons, which were lower-class venues that offered variety entertainment and alcoholic refreshments in many parts of the northeastern United States. I have not found the term concert saloons used broadly in New Orleans, where such venues came to the fore only after the Civil War and were described as cafés. Street music and music played as part of public celebrations, like the yearly celebration of the Battle of New Orleans, is also omitted. Although these omissions are not surprising, noting the existence of such a musically lively context would have helped explain why this city was such a welcoming venue for a broad range of musical activity, including instrumental concerts. It might also have enabled further insights into why portions of the population—particularly those whose Yankee heritage came with anti-theatrical prejudice—may have embraced purely instrumental traditions, as well as greater understanding of the alliances forged across the language/cultural divide between segments of the New Orleans elite.

Despite these omissions, this work still represents a valuable addition to the small body of scholarship on nineteenth-century New Orleans. Baron's work provides a valuable chronicle of the performance of European art music in this city during its golden age, as well as an instructive account of the post-war period, with the city's shifting musical scene, decreasing cultural prominence, and the struggles faced by musicians in this context. Although the local symphony and opera company still allude to the city's history as a center of opera and orchestral music, outsiders know New Orleans primarily for its rich contributions to popular music. Supported by a wealth of primary research, Baron's work presents us with an unfamiliar view of New Orleans, reminding us that its history is much more complex than we commonly assume it to be.