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Unsettling Opera

Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky

Unsettling Opera

Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky

What happens when operas that are comfortably ensconced in the canon are thoroughly rethought and radically recast on stage? What does a staging do to our understanding of an opera, and of opera generally? While a stage production can disrupt a work that was thought to be established, David J. Levin here argues that the genre of opera is itself unsettled, and that the performance of operas, at its best, clarifies this condition by bringing opera’s restlessness and volatility to life.

Unsettling Opera explores a variety of fields, considering questions of operatic textuality, dramaturgical practice, and performance theory. Levin opens with a brief history of opera production, opera studies, and dramatic composition, and goes on to consider in detail various productions of the works of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Ultimately, the book seeks to initiate a dialogue between scholars of music, literature, and performance by addressing questions raised in each field in a manner that influences them all.


274 pages | 26 halftones, 11 musical examples | 6 x 9 | © 2007

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory, Germanic Languages

Music: General Music

Reviews

“In terms of its performance, opera is still an under researched area. David Levin’s book brings light into this darkness. By introducing performance theory to opera studies, he opens up a completely new perspective on opera. Levin reveals to readers that it is only through performance that the unsettledness inherent to opera comes to life. The brilliant argument profits enormously from the author’s elaborate tool kit of a nuanced analytic vocabulary. For everyone interested in opera, Levin’s book is an absolute must.”

Erika Fischer-Lichte, Free University of Berlin Institute for Theatre Studies

“There are few authors living today who possess the hands-on experience, theoretical insight, and sheer passion to interrogate the contemporary staging of our operatic war horses. Unsettling Opera does what it promises, challenging with supreme articulation the comfortable assumption that these warhorses will survive whatever the terms of their production. Levin shows us through theory and practice why staging matters far beyond the opera house.”

Lydia Goehr, Columbia University

“This rigorous and generous book affirms David Levin’s preeminence in interdisciplinary opera studies today. Unsettling Opera means recognizing and empowering opera’s cultural importance and responsibility. If Wagner reminds us that music drama always involves orchestra, singing characters, and the stage, Levin complements that structural grid with an historical one. Canonic works continue to come alive at the present moment of performance, he shows, and that present moment is contingent on dramaturgical urgency, incisiveness, and integrity. This is a study that will bring together practitioners and scholars in energized recognition of a challenge they share but do not always compare.”

Michael P. Steinberg, Brown University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations  
Preface

1 Dramaturgy and Mise-en-Scène
2 Reading a Staging/Staging a Reading: Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Performance
3 Fidelity in Translation: Mozart and Da Ponte’s Le nozze di Figaro
4 Deconstructing Singspiel: Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail
5 Between Sublimation and Audacity: Verdi’s Don Carlos
6 Beyond the Canon: Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules

Appendix: Plot Summaries
Index

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