
The Astor Place Opera House Riot of 1849 - lermontov
https://theoutline.com/post/8659/the-astor-place-opera-house-riot-of-1849-was-lit
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elric
In similar vein, rumour has it that the Belgian revolution of 1830 started at
the opera in Brussels, during a performance of "La muette de Portici" (The
mute girl of Portici). I'm sure the story is much embellished, given that
Belgium was already in open revolt against the Dutch, and independence wasn't
far behind.

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lainga
Zero mention in the article - zero - of the fact that most of Europe had been
engulfed in civil uprisings for the better part of the previous year, and many
of the crushed leaders had emigrated to America.

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walterbell
Any good references on those uprisings?

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empath75
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_(podcast)#Season...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_\(podcast\)#Seasons)

The excellent “revolutions” podcast covered it in 33 episodes.

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rwallace
Interesting piece of history! But I disagree with the assessment on the part
of the author:

> There’s something both grimly funny and profound to me about the riot... all
> over the personal jealousies of two vain and insecure actors

No, it was not over the personal jealousies of the actors. That was just the
spark. If you look carefully at the text, it was over an act of genocide on
the part of the British Empire (the Irish famine, in which a million people
died), and over increasing inequality culminating in the Gilded Age (I should
say now, the first Gilded Age) in which, every time the GDP went up, most of
the population were condemned to even more miserable and desperate poverty.
Put that way, the riot doesn't seem so ridiculous, does it?

