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The Morning Star 2026 Conference
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LYNNE WALSH takes issue with the idea that the arts aren't for 'ordinary people'
A dress rehearsal of Opera North's Madama Butterfly

 

“RUGBY union is a middle-class sport,” a leftie friend told me recently. I should prefer football, he insisted, which is “working-class opera.”


Now, apart from repudiating his daft claim — as a rugby fan, I’m an old Arms Park groundling, rather than a Twickers toff — he got me thinking. Why isn’t opera “working class”?

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