Contextualizing Opera in a Post-dramatic context: Differences and Repetitions Novak Postopera

7/28/2019 Contextualizing Opera in a Post-dramatic context: Differences and Repetitions Novak Postopera

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Jelena Novak

Contextualizing Opera in a Post-dramatic context: Differences and Repetitions

I will start at the end with the death of opera.

Similar to the mythical story about the birth of opera, some authors have regarded the end

of the history of opera as its death. For example, Puccinis opera Turandot (1926) has been

regarded as the symbolic death of opera,1 from which Joseph-Phillipe Salazar established a

paradigm for the death of all the virtues opera once expressed. Bergs opera Lulu2 was

considered by Michel Poizat to be the end of opera. He considered the work as a sign that

established opera as a dead genre, as a form that belongs to the past.3 Adorno viewed the crisis

of opera as symptomatic of the crisis of a bourgeois society that had supported it.

The death of opera may be said to be the point at which opera continues to exist after its

history has ended. It is not about the death of the opera as a genre or as an artistic discipline. It is

about the end of history, or one type of theory of opera that gave the opera world its institutional,

artistic and theoretical legitimacy.4

According to different deaths and ends of theory and artistic categories the death of

the author,5 the death of art,6 the death of art theory,7 and the death of musicology8 the need to

speak and write on symbolical death comes from a need to define new life or significant

changes that are running in some field of science or art. The reinterpretation and reconstruction

of a discipline after its death is typical of the postmodern age. Therefore, the death of the opera

is a symptom of its recently acquired postmodern condition. The concept of death or the end of

opera opens up a question about its status today.9 Has the historical meaning of opera

disappeared with Turandot and is this confirmed in recent operas produced by Philip Glass,

Robert Wilson, Louis Andriessen, Peter Greenaway, John Adams, Peter Sellars, Steve Reich and

Beryl Korot?

1According to Filip-ozef Salazar,Ideologije u operi (Nolit: Beograd, 1984), p. 11.

2The premiere of the first two acts ofLulu was in June 1937 at the State Theatre in Zurich; the three-act version was

first performed in 1979 by the Paris Opera.3

Michel Poizat, The Angels Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and

London, 1992), p. 207.4

The term opera world is analogous to the term art world coined by Arthur Danto (in The Philosophical

Disenfranchisement of Art(Columbia University Press: New York, 1986).5

Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, inImage-Music-Text(Fontana: London, 1977) pp. 142-48.6

Arthur Danto, Op. Cit.7

Victor Burgin, The End of Art Theory/Criticism and Post-modernity (Humanities Press International INC, Atlantic

Highlands: New York, 1987).8

Kofi Agawu, Analyzing Music Under the New Musicological Regime,

http://www.societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.96.2.4/mto.96.2.4.agawu.html, accessed on August 28, 2007.9

The death of opera is analogous to the concept of death of art by Arthur Danto, Op. Cit.


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Certain anachronisms surrounding opera has meant that these artists are not keen to

accept the term. For example, Glass was initially reluctant to name Einstein on the Beach an

opera. That was only finally done at the insistence of Robert Wilson. Glass has continued to feel

uncomfortable with the term, saying,

I have often said that I became an opera composer by accident. I never set out to becomeone. And even today I use the word opera with reluctance [] the operatic tradition

seemed to me hopelessly dead, with no prospect for resurrection [] As a description of

Einstein, I preferred music theatre to opera.10

However, since then, Glass attitude towards opera has changed. When he started work

on Satyagraha, Glass declared that the subject of opera became interesting for him.11 Nowadays,

after working on many film scores, he thinks that opera and film are twins, not so much by birth,

but rather by coincidence, and that opera even tries to become like a film.12

Defining Postopera

While it is possible to accept the classical term opera for all the operatic pieces that

have been created during the last thirty years, I consider that the use of the term postopera is

more precise for works which expand upon and problematize operatic genres. For a definition of

the term postopera I will draw an analogy with the relationship that was being constituted

between the works of postdramatic and dramatic theatre established by theatreologist Hans-Thies

Lehmann. However, since the term drama is often defined in a number of different ways, I

think it is necessary to clarify the meaning of terms that orbit around the soon-to-be-defined term

postopera. These terms include dramatic text, drama, libretto, postdramatic theatre, and

(postdramatic) music theatre.

The notion of dramahas, in itself, a number of different meanings. Certain basic elements

pertaining to drama today remain close to those defined by Aristotle: plot (what happens in a

play), theme (what the play means), character (a role played by an actor in a play),

diction/language (words chosen by the playwright and their enunciation by actors delivering the

lines), music/rhythm (sound, rhythm and melody of the speeches) and spectacle (the visual

elements of the production of a play).13

An Ibersfeld has provided a short history of the term. She

explains that

The Greek word drama means plot. That word covers, in a quite general way, every

type of theatrical event. In the 18th-century the word is given a more specific meaning

and designates theatre performance that goes from traditional genres in order to make a

10 Philip Glass,Music by Philip Glass (Da Capo Press, 1995), p. 3, p. 87.11

Ibid, p. 88.12

From the transcript of an interview conducted between the author and Philip Glass in Lisbon on June 24, 2007.13

See: http://www.kyshakes.org/Resources/Aristotle.html accessed on August 28, 2007.


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kind of realistic mixture of tragedy and comedy ... [i]n contemporary criticism the notion

of drama has unspecified meaning and mainly it relates to every theatrical form that is not

explicitly comical.14

The dramatic text is a verbal, often narrative, text. It is a text that the actors pronounce

during the performance. The notion of dramatic texthas other different meanings. A typology

proposed by aesthetician Misko Suvakovic consults poststructuralist theory. According to him,

there are three types of dramatic text:

1. Dramatic text as a literary text that precedes the theatrical event2. Transformative modes of dramatic text script, concept, libretto3. Dramatic text as the entire theatrical performance that is being read as textual

structure and determined by dramatic indexes.15

The significant feature of dramatic theatre is that all theatrical elements are subordinated to a

dramatic text, which serves as the main structural and symbolical vehicle of the theatrical event.

Libretto is a subspecies of dramatic text. Libretto (ital. libretto small book) is the verbal

text of any opera. Throughout history, it usually had a dramatic provenance. Most often it was

adapted and derived from a literary text or drama, and seldom written exclusively for the opera

form.

The Notion of Postdramatic Theatre

What is postdramatic theatre?16

is a question posed within a book of the same name by

Hans-Thies Lehmann. According to him, postdramatic works are those in which the primacy of a

dramatic text has disappeared. It is a theatre after drama, theatre whose object is a standalone

work of art, and not theatre as an illustration of the dramatic text.

Lehmann has undertaken a theoretical response to the corpus of theatre works in which

the dramatic verbal text appears to have lost its primacy. His neologism does not attempt to

constitute some universal meaning, however. He looks to the kind of theatre made during the last

thirty years whose main characteristic is the deconstruction of the hierarchy of theatrical texts

(verbal, visual, musical and so on). Though postdramatic theatre does not break with the verbal

text, it breaks with its dramatic principles.

14An Ibersfeld,Kljuni termini pozorine analize (CENPI: Beograd, 2001), p. 17 (my translation).

15 Miko uvakovi (Paragrami, tela/figure, CENPI: Beograd, 2001), p. 99.16

Hans-Thies Lehmann:Postdramatisches Theater(Frankfurt/M: Verlag der Autoren, 1999); taken from Kiril

Miladinovs Croatian translation (Hans-Thies Lehmann:Postdramsko kazalite (CDU - Centar za dramsku

umjetnost, Zagreb, TKH Centar za teoriju i praksu izvoakih umetnosti: Beograd, 2004)).


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While in dramatic theatre, text and plot are primary, in postdramatic theatre all

phenomena are given equal attention. Verbal text becomes a constitutive part of body, sound and

visual totality. As it was urgent in Lehmanns case to theorize upon this new type of theatre, it

has also become urgent to theorize upon the new type of opera that has been created during the

past three decades.

The Notion of Postdramatic Music Theatre

Postdramatic music theatre is a subspecies of postdramatic theatre in which verbal texts

should be sung and not spoken. Here we come to a definition of the term music theatre.

According to Patrice Pavis, music theatre is

[a] contemporary form of theatre (to be distinguished from opera, operetta and musicalcomedy) [that] endeavors to bring together text, music and visual staging without

integrating them, merging them, or reducing them to a common denominator (as in

Wagnerian opera), and without distancing them from one another (as in the didactic

operas of Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht).17

The term postdramatic music theatre differs from postopera in its intention to deconstruct the

institution of theatre, and not that of opera.

Postoperatic Characteristics

Through the history of opera most librettos possessed some form of dramatic origin or structure.

In this respect, most traditional operas could be provisionally termed dramatic operas.Einstein

on the Beach by Glass/Wilson was a turning point in that respect and could serve as a

paradigmatic example of postopera.

The characteristics of postopera are as follows:

There is no domination of one operatic text18 over the others Differing from the works of postdramatic music theatre, postopera primarily questions,

problematizes, and redefines the institution of opera, and not theatre

The impossibility of any unity of operatic texts is shown. Texts exists in a rhizome-likerelationship.19 Operatic works whose texts are not in a subordinated hierarchy have

17Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analyses (University of Toronto Press: Toronto

and Buffalo, 1998), p. 227.18

The notion of text denominates a group of signs whether they are linguistic, theatrical or musical.19

I use the notion of rhizome according to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is a different

hierarchical structure of three. In a rhyzome, every point is in connection with all other points.


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abandoned the search for a unity of texts which had featured throughout the history of

opera.20

The impossibility of this unity is shown, and this is one of the important characteristics of

postopera. Unity is impossible since opera is of its nature eclectic, and this eclecticism is a

repercussion of its heterogeneous structure in which popular and high art are connected, and

different arts are connected, like music, theatre and literature.21

The simultaneous decoding

of all these text is impossible, so they often slip over one another, and the different rhythms

of their dramaturgies disturb the comprehensibility of the other texts.

Postopera is an opera which is conscious of the possibilities oftechnological/electronic/digital reproduction. Not only does this count in terms of the

multiplication of opera recordings, but the possibilities of technical reproduction are

conceptualized and problematized in the work. An example of this would be Glasss

opera The Photographer.

These operas rely on the institutions of mass art and the media of mass communication.Postoperas examine the rituals of society whose reality is constructed through media

reality. Indeed, simulational play with screens in Andriessens Rosa, the Death of

Composer (1994), stereotypes of TV realism in Adamss Nixon in China (1987), thedigitally-simulated world of three-dimensional representation in Glasss Monsters of

Grace (1998), the electronic manipulation both of digital pictures and sounds in Reichs

video documentary opera Three Tales (2002), are just some of the examples of a dynamic

reaction towards technological instruments of the media age and the institution of opera

that has been redefined during the last three decades.

Postopera, opera after opera exists after opera as a historical project has ended andwithin this comes its symbolic death. The world of opera after opera includes theoriesthat consider and legitimize operatic works beyond the historical end of opera.

20The history of opera shows the history of the struggle between music and drama. Operatic reforms were trying to

redefine the relation between these two operatic texts. Even before 1976 some operas occasionally showed disunity

between operatic texts. But they are exceptions, confirming the context of establishing the unity.Einstein on the

Beach manifestly showed that the principle of unity had become obsolete. That doesnt mean that a number ofoperas afterEinstein dont continue to traditionally project the search for a unity of texts.Einstein made a different

paradigm visible.21

Misko Suvakovic, Op. Cit., p. 222.


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The Post-history of Opera

Operatic reflections of the rituals of a media-based society point to the emergence of a

post-history of opera whose initial point would beEinstein on the Beach. Post-history history

after history attempts to reconstruct a discipline after its symbolical death. This work by

Glass/Wilson formed a modernistic operatic peak, but also initiated the entrance of opera into

postmodernism.Einstein not only opened new theoretical and philosophical areas for opera, but

also a new operatic practice.22

Postminimal Music and Postopera

It is indicative that among the artists who are the most significant authors of contemporary opera,

are composers of repetitive, postminimal music. In using the term postminimalism in music, I

wish to explore the representative potential of the music it designates. Postminimalism is a

child of musical minimalism, the latter which basically tended to (self-referentially) represent

only the very structure of music.

One of the basic motors of traditional opera is a necessity to represent, illustrate, express,

non-musical phenomena by means of music. Textual drama teases out the narrative quality of

music. On the other hand, rigid repetitive music is not regarded as being open to the possibilities

of extra-musical representation and narrative principles. Consequently, the use of repetitive

music in opera could appear contradictory. But, postminimalist repetitive music is open to

narrative systems. Especially provocative are the dynamics between the layers of an operatic

machine that was traditionally based on the representation of one operatic text by another, and

operatic music derived from repetitive minimalist structures that refused any extra musical

references, i.e. the possibility of entering into representational relationships. Postmininalism

opened up to the new possibilities suggested by poststructuralisms intention to question the

possibility of repetitive music representing something out of its sound structures.

Repetitive technique remains a characteristic of postminimal works. But the rigidity of

the processes compared to those of early minimalist works is weakened. The music is often

tonal, but tonality is not a prerequisite, and the tendency towards reducing sound activity to its

bare minimum has disappeared.

22I consider the musical languages of early repetitive pieces by Philip Glass and Steve Reich as those that belong to

the spectrum of musical modernism. Only after their music ceased to be explicitly self-referential, when it ceased to

represent the very structure of music, and when it started to involve extra-musical phenomena that I consider it to

belong to postmodern music. By its rigidity and obsession with the structuring of time, rhythm, timbre and text, themusic ofEinstein on the Beach appears as one of the peaks of musical modernism. At the same time, since it forms

part of an opera, it started to be involved with extra-musical phenomena, and thus became eligible in theory as a

postmodern work.


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Repetitive processes are used in compositional procedures as a grid, as a recognizable

structure through which different musical languages are ground and recycled. So it is possible

to speak about repetitive romanticism in relation to Glasss La Belle et la Bte, repetitive

Mozartian language in Andriessens M is for Man, Music, Mozart, repetitive Stravinskian

expressionism in GlassAkhnaten,etc.

While early minimalist music was self-representational, presenting only its own structure,

a strong tendency towards exiting this representational tautology and developing different

strategies of broadening representational mechanisms become evident in postminimal music.

Those mechanisms could be labeled as the mimesis of mimesis.23Lets take as an example, such

as the love motive fromLa Belle et la Bte. In this example, feelings are not represented through,

and by means of the music. Rather, it is a case where music is represented as the process of

representing feelings in film or opera. It does not suggest This is love! but rather represents

how love can be represented by music. Another example Andriessens/Greenaways opera

Rosa, the death of a Composer uses fragments of music not to say, for example, this is a

cowboy riding a galloping horse, but rather says: listen to how the ways in which music used in

western films can be represented ironically.

Postminimalism is neither a style nor a movement. It is a heterogeneous conceptual field.

Postminimalists are different authors who comment, reinterpret and question minimalist music in

a postmodern age. Postminimalism typically features in the music of Philip Glass, Steve Reich

and Louis Andriessen. These authors developed their work in that direction after their minimalist

achievements. Apart from them, many contemporary composers who didnt establish a

minimalist language early on appear as postminimalists, including Michael Nyman, Michael

Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Gavin Bryars and Wim Mertens.

The attitude of composers towards operatic music is indicative of their attitude towards

opera in general. Philip Glass postminimalism functions as an eclectic aestheticization of

minimalism and a form of repetitive simulationism. For Glass, opera firstly was a turning point,

a point of departure from his high modernist achievements. In his later works he critically

aestheticizes and simulates the traditional operatic paradigm. Andriessens postminimalism is

developed from commenting upon and criticizing both European modernism and American

minimalism. His operas are post-avant-garde pieces that show the place of opera as a process

which constitutes operatic reality while merging it with film and media. The postminimal music

of John Adams is a function of capitalist realism. His operas are created as fragments of the

propaganda mechanism of the consumerist world, although they are intentionally rooted in ironic

23A concept ofmimesis was developed in the visual arts by Misko Suvakovic.


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commentary. Steve Reichs postminimalism is the praxis of the continuation of a minimalist

ideology through the evolution of multimedia problems. Operas by Steve Reich point to the

problematic position of opera through the continuing evolution of media. All these operas

display a more conscious position in relation to the world of mass media.

When Reich and Glass started to compose their strict minimalist pieces they probably

never dreamed that they would end up, alongside Andriessen and a few other composers, as the

greatest authors of contemporary opera. By fortunate coincidence, or by logical development,

their repetitive music positioned in the age of late-capitalist, post-semiotic media society

coincided with a redefinition of opera. They both entered together into a new postmodern phase

in their work, and at the same time enabled the operatic form to survive its own death.

(text

Jelena Novak; ed. Pwyll ap Sin)

Contextualizing Opera in a Post-dramatic context: Differences and Repetitions Novak Postopera

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