I am the stickler that will glance at you warningly if you whisper during a classical music performance. So I was surprised to notice that in 19th-century novels such as Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and Persuasion by Austen, concerts seemed to be an opportunity for talking and socialization, even moving around during the performance. For example, a long conversation ensues after the following excerpt from Anna Karenina:
A famous diva was singing for the second time, and all the high society of Petersburg was at the theater. Vronsky, from his seat in the first row saw his cousin there, and without waiting for the entr'acte, left to visit her box. "Why didn't you come to dinner?" she asked; and then with a smile she added, so as to be heard only by him, "I admire this clairvoyance of lovers; she was not there."
This phrase "she added, so as to be heard only by him," implies that the rest of the time they wouldn't have been whispering, but talking so that others could hear. Today, a conversation in the middle of a concert would definitely attract some disapproving stares, and maybe even a verbal reprimand from another concert-goer.
So, I am curious: In general, what was concert etiquette like from the beginning of classical music concerts until now, and specifically, when did it become rude to make noise in concerts?
Opera crowds got silent somewhere around the second half of the nineteenth century. The funny thing about the quieting down of crowd behavior at the opera etc. is that it didn't happen everywhere evenly, and the Russians are the group I actually don't know much about, I'm sorry! The French and the Germans started the trend, and the Italians were DEAD last to quiet down, heck La Scala still maintains some of that non-passive verve of the audiences of yore but I think the loggionisti's days are probably numbered! :( Most of the other Italian opera houses had quieted down by the 1950s-70s from what I've read however, La Scala's the last hold out.
While there's a few things that went in to changing the crowd behavior, the man you largely have to thank for the switch would be Wagner in the 1870s, who pioneered many "immersion" techniques in his operas to force the crowd to pay closer attention to the art. These included things that are more or less standard by now, such as turning down the lights in the house, putting the orchestra in a low pit to hide them, and a change in theater architecture that started to privilege the floor seats over the box seats. If you look at older opera houses (like La Scala or San Carlo) you see they have a pantload of boxes, actually as many boxes as the theater designer could cram in, because those made the most money for the theater.
I don't suppose you've sat in any sort of box style seating at a concert or opera? I've only done it once or twice, but the feeling you get is psychologically much cozier, and you really do feel much more like talking than when you're on the floor, it's funny! When you're in a floor seat you have strangers to the front, back, and side, and sitting with strangers (both when the best seats started to be on the floor, and earlier when box subscriptions started to be split so you had strangers mingled in boxes) really made people clam up.
So yeah. Sitting with strangers in the dark is not conducive to talking, and that made opera quiet!
hi! not intending to quash more enthusiastic contributions from the arts experts around here, but there have been at least a couple of related discussions that can get you started
question "What were some of the do's and don'ts for watching an opera in the time of Handel or Mozart or Rossini and when did etiquette start to change to how it is today?" in AMA: History of Theater and Film