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.
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.
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?
