Opera in the nineteenth century, according to Philipp Ther, “became the object of not just one but of two utopias of unity: first, an artistic utopia—the notion of a Gesamtkunstwerk—and second, a social utopia of all classes unified in the theater” (13). Ther's book, now translated as Center Stage from the original German edition, In der Mitte der Gesellschaft: Operntheater in Zentraleuropa, 1815–1914 (München: Oldenbourg, 2006), brilliantly focuses on these important aspects of operatic history: the nature of opera itself as an artistic form that occurs within a particular set of social matrices, themselves reflected in the physical framework of opera houses as public spaces.

It was the potentially totalizing nature of the operatic experience—the unifying of the arts and the social classes—that created the particular affinity for mobilizing and channeling national sentiments in nineteenth-century Europe. In a real tour de force of comparative research, Ther demonstrates this highly complex affinity in a series of case studies—the Dresden Semper opera house in Saxony, the opera theaters of L'viv in Galicia, and finally the Czech National Theater in Prague. Ther has investigated the theater archives in all three cities, set forth the financial underpinnings of these operatic ventures, analyzed their social foundations and aspirations, and studied the national implications of repertory and performance. These three case studies, presented in the full complexity of all these aspects, are followed by a series of concluding analytical and comparative chapters that are likely to set the agenda for thinking about nineteenth-century opera history for quite some time to come.

Ther begins his book by noting the tremendous diffusion of opera across the European continent through the building of opera houses in the nineteenth century—“from Barcelona in the west to Odessa in the east and Helsinki in the north, Europe became equipped with a network of opera theaters”—but nowhere was the network so densely constructed as in Central Europe, where opera intersected with national issues and rivalries. By including Dresden, Ther takes his study beyond the boundaries of the Habsburg monarchy and therefore focuses more broadly on “Central Europe”—while his work suggests that the regional space was perhaps conceptually consolidated by the proliferation and crystallization of cultural forms, including opera. Among his conclusions, he points to a set of operatic exchange routes, from Hamburg to Budapest, from Ljubljana to L'viv, with nationally minded operatic companies flourishing along routes that were themselves the avenues of international exchange.

In the operatic world, the national and the international always existed in ambivalent and overlapping relation to one another. Readers of the Austrian History Yearbook will be interested (though perhaps not surprised) to learn that it was the Viennese architectural firm of Fellner & Helmer that built almost fifty opera theaters—often intended as “national” houses—in late-nineteenth-century Central Europe, whereas the Viennese design studio of Brioschi, Burghart, & Kautsky produced the sets for “national” productions all over the region. Ther stresses the obstacles to the nationalization of opera experienced in Dresden, where the opera house existed under the royal aegis of the Saxon kings. Even the musical leadership of Wagner himself before 1848—staging not just his own operas, but also the reburial of the remains of Carl Maria von Weber—was not sufficient to nationalize the company, which occurred rather later in the century. Likewise, Ther analyzes the aristocratic sponsorship of the L'viv opera companies and the “opera wars” that ensued between rival directors, generating antagonistic partisanship in the public sphere and inhibiting any Polish national operatic consensus. The most successful national venture was the National Theater in Prague, as Ther notes, with “opera trains” bringing in peasants from the countryside to enjoy the national experience of observing their own peasant life being performed on stage in Smetana's Bartered Bride.

The Czechs thus invented themselves as “an opera nation, as in love with the art form as the Italians” (156). Ther notes, however, that the success of nationalization occurred in a pan-Slavic context, including a star Polish tenor who could conveniently master the Czech language, even as the model of Czech national opera was being exported to Southeastern Europe, especially Ljubljana and Zagreb. Furthermore, the moment of national opera was transitory, moderated by the advent of operatic modernism, by the establishment of an internationally standard repertory, and finally by the crystallization of opera as one of the definitive forms of European—not national—civilization.

In Dresden, L'viv, and Prague, there were different degrees of success in producing nationally German, Polish, and Czech opera: “discrete national opera traditions were created, which functioned as symbols of civilization to the outside world and as definers of identity to the native public” (237). Yet, “civilization” always had its cosmopolitan, non-national aspects, and identity certainly had many components besides the national, including the self-satisfaction of participating in a manifestation of cultural elitism. “The existence of German, Polish, and Czech opera cannot be regarded as a given or the natural result of nation-building,” argues Ther—and indeed, nation-building itself could hardly be regarded as a given or as something “natural.”

Ther's study thus emphasizes the profound contingency of national developments in operatic history. Wagner's programmatic nationalism was, Ther suggests, less important than Wagner's rejection by Paris in the Tannhäuser scandal of 1861, leading, at last, to an enthusiastic reception of Wagner in Dresden. The ensuing nationalization of opera in Dresden was not simply conditioned by the national spirit of the unification of Germany in the 1860s, but was also perhaps a matter of compensation for Saxony's relative insignificance in the new empire governed by Bismarck from Berlin.

Contingent factors produced unanticipated results. The national success of the Czech and Polish composers Smetana and Moniuszko had a stunting effect on national opera, making it harder for Czechs to embrace the operas of Dvorak and for Poles to get excited about what ought to have been the ultimate national opera, Władysław Żeleński's Konrad Wallenrod, which was based on the Mickiewicz drama and performed in L'viv in 1885. Finally, the elevation of some forms meant the contingent diminishment of others, and the cherishing of national opera led to the denigration of operetta, which became the object of anti-Semitic venom for its supposedly Jewish associations. Ther's brilliant and complex book has provided an enormous amount for historians to reflect upon as they consider issues of urban culture, national society, and European civilization in the nineteenth century.