Through the Opera Glass

The opera conjures a vivid collection of types: the diva with the glass-shattering high notes, the divo with the bowel-shattering vibrato, the conductor with fierce gestures and fiercer curls, the bejeweled patron equipped with tiny binoculars and pearly champagne. Less known is the impresario—the businessman behind it all. In earlier centuries, he was generally depicted as fat, mustachioed, and conniving, a personification of the grubbiness that ensues whenever art is forced into a dalliance with commerce.