Patrick Bade
Gilded Age Portraits
Summary
Frustrated by the snobbish exclusion from the Academy of Music, newly affluent New Yorkers decided to fund their own opera house. The Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors in 1883. This talk will explore the social background and celebrate the great stars of the early years of the Metropolitan Opera.
Patrick Bade
Patrick Bade is a historian, writer, and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was a senior lecturer at Christie’s Education for many years and has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery, and V&A. He has published on 19th- and early 20th-century paintings and historical vocal recordings. His latest book is Music Wars: 1937–1945.
It was, I think, a general consensus of the critics. It wasn’t a formal thing, but it was usually pretty, well, once Sargent had painted Lady Agnew, it was a kind of given that it was going to be him.
It began in the 1840s and was initially, of course, it took a while before photography could catch up with painting in presenting a more flattering image. So Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s would’ve been the beginning of that.