This is part of a series of articles exploring opera in the 21st century. Read Dr Caitlin Vincent on gender and sexual violence against female characters in our March 2022 magazine, and Shamistha de Soysa on racism and representation in recent Australian opera productions,
One gratifying aspect of working at one of America’s most prestigious conservatoires is the intense academic discussion that balances out the creative preoccupation of my work as a director. And nowhere is the intersection of research and theatrical practice more pronounced than in consideration of the “standard” repertoire and its performance history, particularly where it engages with issues of (mis)representation and interpretation.
Karah Son as Desdemona and Yonghoon Lee as Otello in Opera Australia’s 2022 production of Otello at the Sydney Opera House. Photo © Prudence Upton.
Working here at the University of Cincinnati with soprano and doctoral candidate Heidi Miller (whose thesis handbook Towards a Feminist Performance Practice of Nineteenth-Century Opera Repertoire I recommend to you in advance of its publication), we’ve discovered that contextualising pieces from the operatic canon within the social philosophies that...
An excellent article – clear headed and intelligent.
I am sometimes struck by the superficial, even childish tendency of some commentators to glibly label an opera or production along the lines of ‘male-focused Eurocentric cis-hetero-abled capitalistic patriarchal’ and let it go at that. I even sense a passive-aggressive tendency in these critics to throw such accusations in the face of some unsuspecting punter who is supposed to figure out the harmful intent of their approval, marred by association with the intent of the work’s creators.
A serious work given a serious production merits better than this. One wonders how these critics would address questions about the music itself: its thematic language, structure, beauty and ugliness; in short, its role as the unseen actor in the drama. What about the legacies on which the piece is built? For example the line of descent from Orfeo to Florestan to the Dutchman to Wozzeck to Peter Grimes to Voss to the Sydney Opera House Architect?
I could go on, but the problem is, these commentators won’t even start!
In conclusion, I have no time for patronising fuddy-duddies and bigots. I loved Koskie’s Bayreuth Meistersinger and Herheim’s Bavarian Opera Peter Grimes. What bothers me is the refusal of the above-mentioned commentators to engage in meaningful debate.