Opera as Hypermedium

Meaning-Making, Immediacy, and the Politics of Perception

Tereza Havelková (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

200 Seiten

2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-009126-2 (ISBN)

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Drawing on the concept of hypermediacy from media studies, this book situates opera within the larger context of contemporary media practices, and particularly those that play up the multiplicity, awareness and enjoyment of media. It is driven by the underlying question of what politics of representation and perception opera performs within this context. This entails approaching operas as audiovisual events (rather than works or texts) and paying attention to what they do by visual means, along with the operatic music and singing. The book concentrates on events that foreground their use of media and technology, drawing attention to opera's inherently hypermedial aspects. It works with the recognition that such events nevertheless engender powerful effects of immediacy, which are not contingent on illusionism or the seeming transparency of the medium. It analyzes how effects like presence, liveness and immersion are produced, contesting some critical claims attached to them. It also sheds light on how these effects, often perceived as visceral or material in nature, are related to the production of meaning in opera. The discussion pertains to contemporary pieces such as Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway's Rosa and Writing to Vermeer, as well as productions of the canonical repertory such as Wagner's Ring Cycle by Robert Lepage at the Met and La Fura dels Baus in Valencia.

Tereza Havelková is Assistant Professor in musicology at Charles University in Prague. Her research concentrates on contemporary relationships between opera and the media, and the intersection of aesthetics and politics in opera and music theatre both present and past. She is the co-convenor of the Music Theatre Working Group with the International Federation for Theatre Research.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Theorizing Opera as Hypermedium
Chapter One: Allegory and Excess: Reading Hypermedial Opera
Chapter Two: Theatricality and Absorption: Listening for a Point of Experience
Chapter Three: Liveness and Mediatization: (De)constructing Dichotomies
Chapter Four: Synaesthesia or Anaesthesia? Towards a Politics of Hypermedial Opera
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	09.03.2021
Zusatzinfo	17 illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	236 x 155 mm
Gewicht	703 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Klassik / Oper / Musical
ISBN-10	0-19-009126-6 / 0190091266
ISBN-13	978-0-19-009126-2 / 9780190091262
Zustand	Neuware