Opera, Exoticism and Visual Culture (Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts)

Description

As a uniquely hybrid form of artistic output, straddling music and theatre and high and popular culture, opera offers vast research possibilities not only in the field of music studies but also in the fields of media and cultural studies. Using the exotic legacy of the fin-de-siècle as its primary lens, this volume explores the shifting relationships between the multimedia genre of opera and the rapidly changing world of visual cultures. It also examines the changing aesthetics of opera in composition and performance and historical (dis)continuity, including the postcolonial era. The book comprises eleven interdisciplinary essays by scholars from eight countries, researching in music, theatre, literature, film and media studies, as well as a special contribution by opera director Sir Jonathan Miller. The book begins with an examination of operatic exoticism in various cultural contexts, such as French, Latin American and Arabic culture. The next sections focus on the most beloved figures in opera performance – Salome, Madame Butterfly and Aida – and performances of these operas through history. Further interpretations of the operas in film and new media are then considered. In the final section, Sir Jonathan Miller reflects on the ‘afterlife’ of opera. Cover Contents List of Figures Introduction (Hyunseon Lee) Part I. Confronting Distant Cultures: Operatic Distances and Differences Caught in Transition: Exoticism in Gaspare Spontini’s "Fernand Cortès" (Maria Birbili) Bibliography Daniel Catán’s Butterflies; or, The Opera House in the Jungle (Roberto Ignacio Díaz) Bibliography The Reversal of Exoticism: Ahmed Essyad’s "Le Collier des Ruses" ["The Necklace of Tricks"] (Hervé Lacombe) Bibliography Part II. Exotic Ladies and "Fin-de-Siècle" Visual Culture Eroticizing Antiquity: Madame Mariquita, Régina Badet and the Dance of the Exotic Greeks from Stage to Popular Press (Samuel N. Dorf) Bibliography Loïe Fuller and Salome: The Unveiling of a Myth (Clair Rowden) Bibliography The Kawakami Troupe in Early Twentieth-Century Europe in the Context of Media History (Yûji Nawata) Bibliography Part III. Performing the Other Global Butterfly: Visual Exoticism, or its Reversal, in Silent Film and Opera Performances (Hyunseon Lee) ‘Operatic’ Dimensions of Visual Exoticism: "Madama Butterfly" Cinematic Butterfly Reverse Exoticism: Robert Wilson and Anthony Minghella, and Saegusa Shigeaki’s "Junior Butterfly" Bibliography Scandalizing Orientalism: The "Aida" Productions by Hans Neuenfels (1981) and Peter Konwitschny (1994) (Erika Fischer-Lichte) Bibliography Performing the Icon: The Body on Stage and the Staged Body in Salome’s ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ (Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby) Bibliography Part IV. Operatic Exoticism in Cinema Affirmation and Resistance: Operatic Exoticism on Film (Marcia J. Citron) Bibliography The Fatal Attraction of Madame Butterfly (Naomi Segal) Bibliography Part V. Epilogue: Directing Opera Subsequent Performances (Sir Jonathan Miller) How I Got into Theatre And then Opera The Afterlife of Operas Conceptualism in Opera and Theatre Pretending/Practical Joking as a Directing Style Transposition/Correspondence Notes on Contributors Index