Bernstein, perhaps more than any other conductor in the last century, seemed to dance on the podium. This chapter explores the reception of Bernstein’s dancelike conducting by both critics and musicians. When describing Bernstein’s conducting, whether praising or panning it, critics have regularly described it as ‘choreography’, with the word almost always used pejoratively. For some, Bernstein’s shameless bodily movements enhanced their appreciation of the music; for others, it was a distraction approaching desecration. What has been overlooked is that Bernstein’s conducting was surprisingly consistent – not only in the general movement vocabulary he employs (his infamous leaps, for an obvious example) but also in set patterns of specific movements that he employs from performance to performance of the same work across years. The chapter suggests that we understand Bernstein’s conducting not as spontaneous and random, but as planned, iterative, and locked in his muscle memory: that is, as choreography.

This chapter considers Puccini complicated relationship with the musical canon, or rather with two canons. The author argues that while Puccini’s works stand at the apex of the performing canon, they have been denied entry to the scholarly canon, a body of works deemed historically significant and of high artistic worth. The chapter traces how Puccini’s operas established their place in the international operatic repertory (observing different regional patterns), via stage performances, publisher promotion, and recordings, to the point where they became pre-eminent. The author then turns to examining Puccini’s critical fortunes and evolving reputation among music historians across the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. She explains how Puccini has been castigated as a derivative, overly sentimental composer who appealed to ‘the wrong people’ and did not deserve a place in the history books, though his reputation was to some extent rehabilitated by the end of the twentieth century, finally regarded as worthy of serious scholarly analysis. In recent years, however, Puccini has become the target of calls to dismantle the canon and his works have been criticised for their treatment of gender, sexual violence, race, and class.

Molière worked within the context of a powerful literary establishment, with complex systems of rewards and punishments. Sources of financial support were essential for an author and generally sought from patronage or from the church; institutional prestige might be conferred by election to the Académie Française. Patronage, always potentially unreliable, became increasingly dominated by the King and court and entailed considerable obligations, while the church could prove a formidable enemy. Such sources of patronage and prestige were complemented by a dynamic literary scene, in which reputations could be made or lost: through the salons, both the relatively more social and the more specifically scholarly; and through the critics, with again some writing for a more popular readership and some drawn from among the learned scholars. For a dramatist, popular success was a crucial factor. Molière encountered repeated difficulties, from the withdrawal of patronage, the hostility of the church, and attacks by critics and jealous rivals. He surmounted these with extraordinary success, through a unique combination of factors: great popular success in Paris, the breadth of his appeal, the support of the King and court, the admiration of powerful critical voices and, not least, the influential approval of distinguished scholarly commentators.

The book’s conclusion returns to the commercialisation of Alice in Wonderland by considering the controversy surrounding Jonathan Miller’s 1966 Alice film, screened by the BBC. The art film offered a surreal Victorian dreamscape of childhood, as much for an erudite adult audience as for a child audience. It was a representation that was highly unlikely to have concerned Dodgson at all but was considered controversial enough to provoke public responses of hostility and incomprehension, attracting protests about a liberality that ought to be banned. This controversy allows us to reference changed understandings of childhood. Particularly in light of Disney’s rendition of Alice and the development of the BBC’s institutional role in the 1960s, where there was ready acceptance of the children’s department remit, with the imagery of the child overlaid with expectations of marketing and age-appropriate merchandise. Many issues that vexed the BBC in this period are rooted in the paradox that underpins the whole book: the tension between exploitation and innocence; family and market; public and private; and the normalisation of the logic of commercialisation tied to intellectual property.

Strauss’s successful tenure in Berlin (1898–1918) is closely tied to the cultural environment of the German capital, where the local artistic sphere provided ideas, contacts, and opportunities that enabled him to develop professionally. This chapter explores the rise of Berlin during the nineteenth century as a key urban center, while documenting the city’s cultural panorama. It discusses the city’s most important musical institutions and summarizes characteristic aspects of its musical life, examining Strauss’s role in the broader art scene through his personal links and institutional affiliations. As modernist tendencies at the turn of the century conflicted with traditional ideals, Strauss emerged as a figure who, as a servant of the court but also a modernist, was able to reconcile these conflicting views.

The introduction begins with an overview of the difficulties that countries emerging from civil war face in establishing a stable peace on the one hand and democracy on the other. Focusing on the complications that security concerns pose for achieving both of these goals, the chapter outlines power-sharing institutions’ capacity to stabilize the peace and lay the groundwork for democracy by addressing rival actors’ apprehensions. It then engages with the critique that there exists a trade-off between security and democracy as well as the claim that power-sharing arrangements inhibit the development of democracy. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the analytical tools used to test our argument, provides an overview of the book’s goals, and outlines the plan of the book.

Operettas and their creation have long been considered a system of standardized production. This chapter examines the ‘operetta industry’ as it developed in Vienna around 1900 with a focus on theatrical production practice and the ways it shaped the genre’s artistic development. Sources include librettos, periodicals, archival sources and Operettenkönige, a backstage operetta novel of unknown authorship, published in 1911. Vienna’s operetta circle was a self-contained, vertically integrated system which controlled all aspects of operetta composition and production, from the mentorship of young composers to press reception and the publication and export of successful works. Critics saw this regulation as an impediment to artistic innovation, but to insiders the high level of control was necessary to set genre conventions. For them, innovation belonged in the small-scale, self-conscious manipulation of these norms. While lucrative and popular, the industry did not often easily respond to large-scale change, and eventually became so highly leveraged that a single unsuccessful season could put a major theatre out of business. As operetta declined in favour of the revue and film, the industry disintegrated.

Chapter 5 traces the evidence for the practice of astrometeorology by scholars and professionals in the service of the European elite. This phenomenon faced criticism from those who feared the rise of judicial astrology and the associated threat of demonic intervention. The chapter analyses the level of meteorological knowledge displayed by scholars such as William of Conches, adviser to Geoffrey of Anjou. William knew works attributed to Masha’allah as well as Seneca, and deployed the new, scientific terminology that spread in the twelfth century. A key point is that works like William’s depict secular rulers as keenly interested in understanding and predicting the weather. From this the chapter moves on to the more advanced astrometeorological teachings of Abraham Ibn Ezra, a Jewish scholar from al Andalus who travelled across Italy and Spain. One of his innovations was to provide tables of mathematical values to be applied to astrometeorological configurations, making forecasting much simpler. This was to be followed by others in the thirteenth century. The chapter ends with comment on the scarcity of surviving twelfth-century copies of these works.