Opera and the social production of meaning: A cultural studies analysis of 'Aida'

This thesis demonstrates how expressive aesthetic cultural forms such as opera can be examined using an anthropological approach informed by the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. Proponents of cultural studies suggest that hegemonic ideologies are frequently encoded in the discursive strategies employed in "texts" and that these ideological encodings (re)produce the dominant or "preferred" attitudes in society at a particular moment in history. Guiseppe Verdi's opera Aida will be "read" as a text to demonstrate some of the ideological encodings in this opera.