Opera Houses: Tools Of Cultural Imperialism, Or What?

That’s one theory, anyway, but it’s a bit more complicated in practice. Look at the history of Cairo’s opera house, where Arabic-language works gradually came to coexist with European repertoire. “In the late-19th century, a hybrid Arabic and Turkish (and Greek, Armenian, French and Italian) cultural economy of musical theatre developed. Arabic music made European acting acceptable and contributed to the acceptance of the new performance genre. Arabic operetta developed in ‘low’ and ‘high’ versions that remain alive today.”