Alexandra Wilson – författare

Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? In this book, author Alexandra Wilson traces La Bohème's rise to fame and demonstrates that its success grew steadily through stage performances, recordings, filmed versions and the endorsements of star singers. More recently, popular songs, film soundtracks and musicals that draw on the opera's music and themes added further to its immense cultural impact.This cultural history offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. Wilson argues that La Bohème's approach to realism and its flouting of conventions of the Italian operatic tradition made it strikingly modern for the 1890s. She explores how Puccini and his librettists engaged with gender, urban poverty and nostalgia--themes that grew out of the work's own time and continue to resonate with audiences more than 120 years later. Her analysis of the opera's depiction of Paris reveals that La Bohème was not only influenced by the romantic mythologies surrounding the city to this day but also helped shape them. Wilson's consideration of how directors have reinvented this opera for a new age completes this fascinating history of La Bohème, making it essential reading for anyone interested in this opera and the works it inspired.

Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? In this book, author Alexandra Wilson traces La Bohème's rise to fame and demonstrates that its success grew steadily through stage performances, recordings, filmed versions and the endorsements of star singers. More recently, popular songs, film soundtracks and musicals that draw on the opera's music and themes added further to its immense cultural impact.This cultural history offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. Wilson argues that La Bohème's approach to realism and its flouting of conventions of the Italian operatic tradition made it strikingly modern for the 1890s. She explores how Puccini and his librettists engaged with gender, urban poverty and nostalgia--themes that grew out of the work's own time and continue to resonate with audiences more than 120 years later. Her analysis of the opera's depiction of Paris reveals that La Bohème was not only influenced by the romantic mythologies surrounding the city to this day but also helped shape them. Wilson's consideration of how directors have reinvented this opera for a new age completes this fascinating history of La Bohème, making it essential reading for anyone interested in this opera and the works it inspired.

Jazz, the Charleston, nightclubs, cocktails, cinema, and musical theatre: 1920s British nightlife was vibrant and exhilarating. But where did opera fit into this fashionable new entertainment world? Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain explores the interaction between opera and popular culture at a key historical moment when there was a growing imperative to categorize art forms as "highbrow," "middlebrow," or "lowbrow." Literary studies of the so-called "battle of the brows" have been numerous, but this is the first book to consider the place of opera in interwar debates about high and low culture. This study by Alexandra Wilson argues that opera was extremely difficult to pigeonhole: although some contemporary commentators believed it to be too highbrow, others thought it not highbrow enough. Opera in the Jazz Age paints a lively and engaging picture of 1920s operatic culture, and introduces a charismatic cast of early twentieth-century critics, conductors, and celebrity singers. Opera was performed during this period to socially mixed audiences in a variety of spaces beyond the conventional opera house: music halls, cinemas, cafés and schools. Performance and production standards were not always high - often quite the reverse - but opera-going was evidently great fun. Office boys whistled operatic tunes they had heard on the gramophone and there was a genuine sense that opera was for everyone. In this provocative and timely study, Wilson considers how the opera debate of the 1920s continues to shape the ways in which we discuss the art form, and draws connections between the battle of the brows and present-day discussions about elitism. The book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the cultural politics of twentieth-century Britain and is essential reading for anybody interested in the history of opera, the battle of the brows, or simply the perennially fascinating decade that was the 1920s.

In Britain today, opera is routinely called elitist. But things were not always so. Examining shifting cultural attitudes over the century from 1920 to 2020, Someone Else's Music reveals a hidden history of popular opera-going in Britain, which defies the opera-elitism stereotype. At the same time, the book traces how, when, and why that stereotype arose. It uses opera as a lens through which to examine the broader history of changing cultural values in the UK, from 1920s Reithian ideals about art's civilising qualities to contemporary culture wars. The controversies opera has prompted over the last century reveal a great deal about national identity — who Britons think they are and who they want to be.The book ranges widely across topics including education, public broadcasting, arts policy, and attitudes towards subsidy, and traces opera's surprisingly close relationship with popular culture. We meet a diverse cast of characters, including working-class East-End opera fans, opera-singing Welsh miners, soldiers discovering opera in wartime Italy, and holidaymakers watching it at Butlin's. The book is as much about the secretary camping out in the queue for gallery tickets as it is about the duchess in the stalls.But at what point did people start calling opera elitist and why? Analysing lasting stereotypes around opera, Wilson reveals them to be politically motivated, founded in deep-seated British anxieties about class, education, and national identity. Someone Else's Music is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the debates we are having today about arts funding, accessibility and who opera is 'for'. It reveals that opera used to be for everyone - and shows us how it could be again.

A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.

A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.

'An intelligent and immersive courtroom drama, a compelling new voice in legal crime fiction' ANDREA MARATHERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY MURDER.A young black man is arrested for murder. The case against him is strong - a mum and a teacher saw him standing over a body in a park, a knife still in hand.But his up-and-coming barrister Rosa knows how people prejudge, but most of all, she suspects something is amiss. This boy comes from her neighbourhood. From a good family. So she begins to dig...As Rosa discovers secret upon terrible secret, she moves closer to finding a testimony that could win the case - or bring the whole establishment down on her.The Witness is a frightening thriller about a young lawyer who will do anything to set her defendant free.'This is exactly what it's like to be a criminal barrister at the sharp end of Legal Aid work, and an important corrective to the cliché that all barristers are posh, white and loaded. An authentic, tense legal thriller from an author who knows what she's talking about'HARRIET TYCE'Her striking debut shows she is expert at using the form to highlight aspects of everyday ethnic minority experience: the drip-drip of countless micro-aggressions, and Rosa's daunting disadvantages when facing white middle-class opponents in court'SUNDAY TIMES'A gripping insight into the intricacies of the British legal system and the assumptions that are made. The Witness is a compelling story, told by an original new voice, with a breathtaking conclusion'ROBERT GOLD'A powerful and authentic legal thriller . . . a tense, twisty read that highlights just how frightening the legal and penal system can be when your future depends upon who the jury believes'JO CALLAGHAN'Fresh, eye-opening, rage-inducing, humane. A coruscating indictment of a legal system held together by Gaffer tape and bias'TAMAR COHEN'Alexandra Wilson's tense and very twisty crime thriller is a powerful page-turner about the importance of family, the burden of guilt, and the racism that pervades our legal systems. A superb and timely debut!'ASHLEY TATE'A twisty courtroom thriller that is destined to become a TV drama'I PAPER

The remarkable debut novel by prominent young mixed-race barrister Alexandra Wilson is a moving, twisty legal thriller for the 21st century.SHE SAW IT ALLBUT SHE CAN NEVER TELLA young black man is arrested for murder. The case against him is strong - a mum and a teacher saw him standing over a body in a park, a knife still in hand.But his up-and-coming barrister Rosa knows how people prejudge, but most of all, she suspects something is amiss. This boy comes from her neighbourhood. From a good family. So she begins to dig...As Rosa discovers secret upon terrible secret, she moves closer to finding a testimony that could win the case - or bring the whole establishment down on her.The Witness is a frightening thriller about how we judge guilt, about the strength of a young woman, and is the start of a groundbreaking new series.

'An intelligent and immersive courtroom drama, a compelling new voice in legal crime fiction' ANDREA MARASHE SAW IT ALLBUT SHE CAN NEVER TELLA young black man is arrested for murder. The case against him is strong - a mum and a teacher saw him standing over a body in a park, a knife still in hand.But his up-and-coming barrister Rosa knows how people prejudge, but most of all, she suspects something is amiss. This boy comes from her neighbourhood. From a good family. So she begins to dig...As Rosa discovers secret upon terrible secret, she moves closer to finding a testimony that could win the case - or bring the whole establishment down on her.The Witness isthe start of a groundbreaking new series by young barrister and bestselling author of In Black and White, Alexandra Wilson.'This is exactly what it's like to be a criminal barrister at the sharp end of Legal Aid work, and an important corrective to the cliché that all barristers are posh, white and loaded. An authentic, tense legal thriller from an author who knows what she's talking about'HARRIET TYCE'Her striking debut shows she is expert at using the form to highlight aspects of everyday ethnic minority experience: the drip-drip of countless micro-aggressions, and Rosa's daunting disadvantages when facing white middle-class opponents in court'SUNDAY TIMES'A gripping insight into the intricacies of the British legal system and the assumptions that are made. The Witness is a compelling story, told by an original new voice, with a breathtaking conclusion'Robert Gold'A powerful and authentic legal thriller . . . a tense, twisty read that highlights just how frightening the legal and penal system can be when your future depends upon who the jury believes'JO CALLAGHAN'Fresh, eye-opening, rage-inducing, humane. A coruscating indictment of a legal system held together by Gaffer tape and bias'TAMAR COHEN'Alexandra Wilson's tense and very twisty crime thriller is a powerful page-turner about the importance of family, the burden of guilt, and the racism that pervades our legal systems. A superb and timely debut!'ASHLEY TATE'A twisty courtoom thriller that is destined to become a TV drama'I PAPER

Exploring the many dimensions of Giacomo Puccini's historical legacy and significance, this book provides new perspectives on the life and work of a much-loved opera composer and demonstrates how political concerns shape the way we approach and perform his works in the present day. Accessibly written chapters by a range of international experts explore Puccini's interests, attitudes, and relationships, and examine how his works reflected the cultural, political, and social zeitgeist of their time. The essays first map Puccini's personal and professional networks, the regions and cities that meant so much to him, and his travels for both work and leisure. They go on to probe the composer's attitudes towards contemporary developments in music, literature, film, and drama and investigate his collaboration with librettists, publishers, singers, and conductors. The book closes with chapters on Puccini's compositional legacy, performance history, relationship with popular culture, and place in the international operatic canon.

Opera is often dismissed as outdated and excessive, and perceived to be characterised by excessive passions, sumptuous costumes, and ill-mannered divas. In reality, however, operas address the most fundamental and universal of human concerns - love, death, jealousy, greed, and power. Revealing the diverse reasons behind opera's lasting appeal, opera champion and expert Alexandra Wilson provides a lucid and engaging introduction to the agendas that have governed its composition, production and reception over the last four centuries, and explains the reasons behind its enduring appeal.

**PAPERBACK FEATURES NEW CONTENT. NOW WITH AFTERWORD AND READING GROUP QUESTIONS**'A compelling and courageous memoir forcing the legal profession to confront uncomfortable truths about race and class. Alexandra Wilson is a bold and vital voice. This is a book that urgently needs to be read by everyone inside, and outside, the justice system.' THE SECRET BARRISTER 'A riveting book in the best tradition of courtroom dramas but from the fresh perspective of a young female mixed-race barrister. That Alexandra is "often" mistaken for the defendant shows how important her presence at the bar really is.' MATT RUDD, THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINEAlexandra Wilson was a teenager when her dear family friend Ayo was stabbed on his way home from football. Ayo's death changed Alexandra. She felt compelled to enter the legal profession in search of answers. As a junior criminal and family law barrister, Alexandra finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few. A world in which fellow barristers sigh with relief when a racist judge retires: 'I've got a black kid today and he would have had no hope'. In her debut book, In Black and White, Alexandra re-creates the tense courtroom scenes, the heart-breaking meetings with teenage clients, and the moments of frustration and triumph that make up a young barrister's life. Alexandra shows us how it feels to defend someone who hates the colour of your skin, or someone you suspect is guilty. We see what it is like for children coerced into county line drug deals and the damage that can be caused when we criminalise teenagers. Alexandra's account of what she has witnessed as a young mixed-race barrister is in equal parts shocking, compelling, confounding and powerful. 'An inspirational, clear-eyed account of life as a junior barrister is made all the more exceptional by the determination, passion, humanity and drive of the author. Anyone interested in seeing how the law really works should read it.' SARAH LANGFORD'This is the story of a young woman who overcame all the obstacles a very old profession could throw at her, and she survived, with her integrity intact.' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH'Wilson offers a role model for those who still think the law is for other people, and shows the way for English courts to become ever less Dickensian.'DAVID COWAN, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT