In Europe Opera has historically also been (and still remains, but less so) also middle and working class entertainment.
Here's a quote I've found - it appears it was popular with US folky types too:
Significantly, the opera house was the “first musical institution to open
its doors to the general public” (Zelochow, 1993: 261).The first opera
house opened in Venice in 1637: it presented “commercial opera run
for profit . . . offering the new, up-to-date entertainment to anyone
who could afford a ticket” (Raynor, 1972: 169). By the end of the
century Venice had sixteen opera houses open to the general public.
Interestingly, as Henry Raynor observes, “The Venetian audience consisted of all social classes” (ibid: 171). Bernard Zelochow argues that
this remained the case throughout the next two centuries.
By the late eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century the opera
played a preeminent role in the cultural life of Europe. The opera was
enjoyed and understood by a broad cross-section of urban Europeans
and Americans.The opera house became the meeting place of all social
classes in society. . . . The absence of the concept of a classical repertoire is an index of the popularity and vigor of opera as a mode of
communication and entertainment. (Zelochow, 1993: 262)
By the nineteenth century, then, opera was established as a widely available form of popular entertainment consumed by people of all social
classes. As Lawrence W. Levine explains, referring specifically to the US
(but also the case in most of Europe), opera was an integral part of a
shared public culture, “performed in a variety of settings, [it] enjoyed
great popularity, and [was] shared by a broad segment of the population” (Levine, 1988: 85).
For example, on returning to the United States in the late 1860s from England, where he had been American Consul, George Makepeace Towle noted how “Lucretia Borgia and Faust,The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni are everywhere popular;
you may hear their airs in the drawing room and concert halls, as well
as whistled by the street boys and ground out on the hand organs”
(quoted in Levine, 1988: 99–100).