Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Rape at the Opera : Staging Sexual Violence, Paperback / softback Book

Rape at the Opera : Staging Sexual Violence Paperback / softback

Part of the Music and Social Justice series

Paperback / softback

Description

The most-performed operas today were written at least a hundred years ago and carry some outdated and deeply problematic ideas.

When performed uncritically, the misogyny, racism, and other ideologies present in many of these works clash with modern sensibilities.

In Rape at the Opera, Margaret Cormier argues that production and performance are vital elements of opera, and that contemporary opera practitioners not only interpret but create operatic works when they put them onstage.

Where some directors explicitly respond to contemporary dialogues about sexual violence, others utilize sexual violence as a surefire way to titillate, to shock, and to generate press for a new production. Drawing on archival footage as well as attendance at live events, Cormier analyzes productions of canonic operas from German, Italian, and French traditions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, including Die EntfÜhrung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, La forza del destino, Un ballo in maschera, Salome, and Turandot.

In doing so, Cormier highlights the dynamism of twenty-first-century opera performance practice with regard to sexual violence, establishes methods to evaluate representations of sexual violence on the opera stage, and reframes the primary responsibility of opera critics and creators as being not to opera composers and librettists but to the public.

Information

Other Formats

£25.95

 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information