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.
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ix | |
| Introduction |
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1 | (10) |
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PART I Confronting Distant Cultures: Operatic Distances and Differences |
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11 | (60) |
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Caught in Transition: Exoticism in Gaspare Spontini's Fernand Cortes |
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13 | (18) |
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Daniel Catan's Butterflies; or, The Opera House in the Jungle |
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31 | (22) |
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The Reversal of Exoticism: Ahmed Essyad's Le Collier des Ruses [ The Necklace of Tricks] |
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53 | (18) |
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PART II Exotic Ladies and Fin-de-Siecle Visual Culture |
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71 | (58) |
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Eroticizing Antiquity: Madame Mariquita, Regina Badet and the Dance of the Exotic Greeks from Stage to Popular Press |
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73 | (20) |
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Loie Fuller and Salome: The Unveiling of a Myth |
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93 | (18) |
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The Kawakami Troupe in Early Twentieth-Century Europe in the Context of Media History |
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111 | (18) |
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PART III Performing the Other |
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129 | (74) |
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Global Butterfly: Visual Exoticism, or its Reversal, in Silent Film and Opera Performances |
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131 | (32) |
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Scandalizing Orientalism: The Aida Productions by Hans Neuenfels (1981) and Peter Konwitschny (1994) |
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163 | (16) |
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Performing the Icon: The Body on Stage and the Staged Body in Salome's 'Dance of the Seven Veils' |
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179 | (24) |
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PART IV Operatic Exoticism in Cinema |
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203 | (40) |
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Affirmation and Resistance: Operatic Exoticism on Film |
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205 | (18) |
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The Fatal Attraction of Madame Butterfly |
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223 | (20) |
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PART V Epilogue: Directing Opera |
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243 | (30) |
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245 | (28) |
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| Notes on Contributors |
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273 | (6) |
| Index |
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279 | |
Hyunseon Lee is Privatdozent in Modern German Literature and Media Studies at Siegen University and Research Associate at the Centre for Film Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is also guest lecturer of Korean Studies at Tübingen University. Her publications include the monograph Metamorphosen der Madame Butterfly. Interkulturelle Liebschaften zwischen Literatur, Oper und Film (2015) and the co-edited volumes Mörderinnen (2013) and Akira Kurosawa und seine Zeit (2005). She has published various works on music theatre, film and media aesthetics, German literature and Korean culture. Her current research interests focus on the Cold War in cinema and literature (Korea/Germany), film and history. Naomi Segal is Professorial Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of seventy-nine articles and fourteen books on comparative literature, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalysis and the body. Her monographs include Consensuality (2009), André Gide: Pederasty & Pedagogy (1998), The Adulteresss Child (1992), Narcissus and Echo (1988) and The Unintended Reader (1986, 2010). She is currently retranslating Anzieus Le Moi-peau and has two more monographs at the planning stage. She is a Chevalier dans lordre des Palmes académiques and a member of the Academia Europaea.
