Opera As Art

Curation as a concept and a catchword in modern parlance has, over recent decades, become deeply ingrained in modern culture. The purpose of this study is to explore the curatorial forces at work within the modern opera house and to examine the functionaries and processes that guide them. In turn, comparisons are made with the workings of the traditional art museum, where artworks are studied, preserved, restored, displayed and contextualised – processes which are also present in the opera house. Curatorial roles in each institution are identified and described, and the role of the celebrity art curator is compared with that of the modern stage director, who has acquired previously undreamt-of licence to interrogate operatic works, overlaying them with new concepts and levels of meaning in order to reinvent and redefine the operatic repertoire for contemporary needs. A point of coalescence between the opera house and the art museum is identified, with the transformation, towards the end of the nineteenth century, of the opera house into the operatic museum. Curatorial practices in the opera house are examined, and further communalities and synergies in the way that ‘works’ are defined in each institution are explored. This study also considers the so-called ‘birth’ of opera around the start of the seventeenth century, with reference to the near-contemporary rise of the modern art museum, outlining operatic practice and performance history over the last 400 years in order to identify the curatorial practices that have historically been employed in the maintenance and development of the repertoire. This examination of the forces of curation within the modern opera house will highlight aspects of authenticity, authorial intent, preservation, restoration and historically informed performance practice.

"When the curtain goes up on The Teapot Opera there is no music. There are no people, either. But there are plenty of characters: there's the teapot, of course, and a white plastic stallion, a china harpist, a skull, an expresso machine, chess pieces, fruit, the Michelin Tire man, fragments of a classical sculpture, ancient books, a souvenir bust of Teddy Roosevelt, valves and gauges of all kinds, a Shriner's fez, a glass eyeball, billiard balls, and so much more."--Jacket flap.

This book maps the interrelation between art, theatre, and opera in a time of dramatic historical change and political contestation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris. Contributions to the volume trace the creative connections and clashes fostered by the sharing of new types of subject matter throughout the period. Scholars from art history, theatre studies and musicology take as their subjects a variety of protagonists from theatre, opera, literature and history in order to make visible the intimately interwoven and entangled world of Parisian arts.

Paul Thom argues that opera is a set of practices framed by the concepts of work, interpretation, performance, and art. His argument is that operatic works have the potential to be art, but so do operatic productions, independently of their value as interpretations of the works they stage.

This title is a part of the series “Schwung”; Critical Curating and Aesthetic Management for Art, Business and Politics. Conventional wisdom holds that the performing arts, due to the economic nature of the sector, are condemned to a state of permanent financial crisis. However, increasingly frequent information about the fiscal troubles of several opera houses has also led to questions about the soundness of the strategies adopted by these organizations, and about the administrative abilities of their general managers. The case narrated here (La Fenice, Venice’s main opera theater), represents a successful case in which, still inside the borders of a subsidized cultural production, a managerial turn led to substantial improvements in efficiency and productivity levels. However, the success of a case such as La Fenice in terms of bottom-line fiscal indicators does not imply immunity to critiques. The description and analysis of the case, far from being presented as a best practice with any claim of generalization, allows for a critical reflection on arts management, starting from the tension between art and commerce discussed initially by the Frankfurt School. Critiques not only challenge the dominant meaning of what is considered good and what is not: they also contribute to the reshaping of a new social order. Only by looking at the whole picture, at both dominant and critical voices, can we come to a greater understanding of current ideological stances in the arts world and contextualize them within existing discourses on art, management studies, and arts management.

Art, Theatre, and Opera in Paris, 1750-1850: Exchanges and Tensions maps some of the many complex and vivid connections between art, theatre, and opera in a period of dramatic and challenging historical change, thereby deepening an understanding of familiar (and less familiar) artworks, practices, and critical strategies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout this period, new types of subject matter were shared, fostering both creative connections and reflection on matters of decorum, legibility, pictorial, and dramatic structure. Correspondances were at work on several levels: conception, design, and critical judgement. In a time of vigorous social, political, and cultural contestation, the status and role of the arts and their interrelation came to be a matter of passionate public scrutiny. Scholars from art history, French theatre studies, and musicology trace some of those connections and clashes, making visible the intimately interwoven and entangled world of the arts. Protagonists include Diderot, Sedaine, Jacques-Louis David, Ignace-Eug?-Marie Degotti, Marie Malibran, Paul Delaroche, Casimir Delavigne, Marie Dorval, the 'Bleeding Nun' from Lewis's The Monk, the Com?e-Fran?se and Etienne-Jean Del?uze.

Discusses the formal relations between opera and drama, aesthetic representation, the portrayal of opera in novels, and cultural attitudes toward opera.