Postopera: reinventing the voice-body

Both in opera studies and in most operatic works, the singing body is taken for granted. In "Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body", Jelena Novak reintroduces an awareness of the physicality of the singing body to opera studies. Arguing that the body-voice relationship itself is a producer...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Novak, Jelena 1974- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Farnham Ashgate 2015
Series:Ashgate interdisciplinary studies in opera
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Online Access:Inhaltsverzeichnis
Summary:Both in opera studies and in most operatic works, the singing body is taken for granted. In "Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body", Jelena Novak reintroduces an awareness of the physicality of the singing body to opera studies. Arguing that the body-voice relationship itself is a producer of meaning, she furthermore posits this relationship as one of the major driving forces in recent opera. She takes as her focus six contemporary operas - La Belle et la BA*te (Philip Glass), Writing to Vermeer (Louis Andriessen, Peter Greenaway), Three Tales (Steve Reich, Beryl Korot), One (Michel van der Aa), Homeland (Laurie Anderson) and La Commedia (Louis Andriessen, Hal Hartley) - which she terms a "postoperasa"). These pieces are sites for creative exploration, where the boundaries of the opera world are stretched. Central to this is of the impact of new media, a de-synchronization between image and sound, or a redefinition of body-voice-gender relationships. Novak dissects the singing body as a set of rules, protocols, effects, strategies. That dissection shows how it acts within the world of opera, what interventions it makes, and how it constitutes opera's meanings. - Jelena Novak works in the area of musicology, opera studies, performance studies, dramaturgy and criticism. She is a postdoctoral research fellow at CESEM (Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estetica Musical), New University of Lisbon, Portugal with the project 'Opera beyond Drama.' She has been a founding committee member of the Society for Minimalist Music and a founding member of the editorial collective TkH (Walking Theory). In 2013 she won the Thurnau Award for Music-Theatre Studies.
Physical Description:XVII, 173 S. Ill.
ISBN:9781472441034

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