Pop Star to Opera Star: labour, skill and value in musical performance

The British TV show Pop Star to Opera Star (2010/2011) was a contribution to a well-worn reality TV genre in which people are challenged to undertake a professional activity in which they have no prior experience. In this article I examine the way in which popular challenge programmes such as Pop Star to Opera Star, which suggest that highly skilled activities can be ‘faked’ with no more than a few day’s training, stage what art theorist John Roberts describes as ‘the generalised deskilling of labour under capitalism’. And I argue that in particular, the historical transvaluation of musical performance skills throughout the capitalist era exposes the contradictions that are inherent in both social and cultural constructions of the value of labour under capitalism.