Fashioning the Social Value of Opera: Made by Juozas Statkevičius, Lithuania

Abstract

Opera in Lithuania has always been a rather static form of high culture. It was stage director Dalia Ibelhauptaitė who dared to challenge the tradition in 2006, founding an independent opera company Bohemiečiai (The Bohemians, now Vilnius City Opera). In contrast to the state opera house, The Bohemians directed their attention to the general, non-elite audiences. One of the major reasons of the troupe’s enormous success lies in the fact that their costumes were created by the famous Lithuanian fashion designer Juozas Statkevičius.

Along with marvellous designs, another important element of Statkevičius’s contribution to the world of the opera is his communications of the theme in local media that have had a highly promotional effect. Through the analysis of the designer’s public interviews and other media messages the article examines how his operatic costume discourse could have contributed to the opera becoming a more open-minded and inclusive genre. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts of cultural and symbolical capital, the text interrogates how the visibility of the fashion designer contributed to the cultural value of opera-going. Following the theoretical assumptions of Chris Rojek and Graeme Turner about the effects of the celebrity on pop culture, the article explores the result of such union as far as “fashioning the social value of opera” is concerned.