Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 15 Number 2, August 2014
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The legacy of opera: reading music theatre as experience and performance. Edited by Dominic Symonds and Pamela Karantonis. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. 269 pp. ISBN 978-90-420-3691-8 (softcover).
Reviewed by
Valparaiso University
The contents of this book arose out of meetings of the Music Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. The editors of the book go to great lengths to indicate that this book is not one on or from musicologists or the musicology field, but emanates from discussions surrounding music theatre. They submit that, while music is integral to performance and theatre, it should not be the primary focus of study related to opera and music theatre. Since musicology studies of opera lack an interrogation of performativity and other concepts outside of music, and since musical theatre studies lack in-depth research focused on the role of music in that discipline, it made sense to compile a book that fills the gap that both fields have either ignored or left open for interpretation.
The introduction and eleven chapters delve into three significant areas of music theatre: 1) how opera has built a legacy enshrined in the ontological potency of operatic performance and the ideological structuring of the apparatus, 2) how opera re-evaluates performance on the musical stage by considering the performativity of the voice and body of the singing actor and the effect of the performative encounter on audiences, and 3) how opera has explored new forms and practices that have emerged through paradigmatic or technological shifts away from the operatic past. Chapter 1 explores music theatre and opera in the twentieth century, how it functioned ontologically, and looks at what a twenty-first century readership and audience may actually be. Chapter 2 then considers ways that opera has become trapped by its past, and how music theatre should move towards a "post-operatic" or "anti-operatic" deconstruction. Chapter 3 through 6 focus on the primary language of music theatre – the voice. Chapter 3 encourages listeners and scholars to expand their viewpoints surrounding the voice to include experimentations with vocality and performance in twenty-first century society. Chapter 4 links traditional seventeenth-century stagecraft to the performativity of the body and the transmission of music-dramatic "affect." Chapter 5 examines three operatic divas and their vocal performance practices, which grow out of theatre studies, theatrical stage direction, and theories of acting. Chapter 6 considers gender performativity, how they apply to performance studies or theatre studies, and within the context of the operatic tenor and vocal celebrity. The next four chapters (7-10) discuss newer forms of music theatre in terms of tradition and audience perspective. Topics focused upon include the paradigm shift of the Brechtian new dawn, the mediatisation of screen operas, and the cultural negotiation of diasporic communities engaging with music theatre in their non-native environments. The final chapter provides a conclusion to the book by examining the idea of practice as research in twenty-first century performance scholarship, and as a methodological tool to examine opera throughout its various historical stages.
This book explores music theatre and opera from a different vantage point: that of performance and theatre. While both genres have had significant scholarly research from the musicology side, the perspectives of theatre and performance have not been sufficiently researched or blended into the current scholarship. This book attempts to address these lacunae and provide a more well-rounded and balanced approach to the study of music theatre and opera in the twenty-first century.