Opera and stage art
As a young singer, I was never really interested in opera as an artform. I remember when I was a teenager visiting the Royal Scottish Conservatoire in Glasgow saying this to a teacher from the vocal department. He strongly advised me not to close off from this style of music, since a significant amount of the repertoire for a countertenor comes from this genre. At the time, I did not feel comfortable with acting or portraying a role. I also had had a limited experience with opera. I never really understood what it was. It seemed big and old-fashioned to me, conservative and rigid.
Through my years of studying singing, I gained experience and confidence in acting and stage presence. Portraying something or someone on stage became an interest and a skill I could develop.
In the book Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater, the author Nina Penner suggests the following requirements for Opera: “In contrast to songs, operas present stories by means of singers enacting characters. Unlike nonoperatic performances of other genres of vocal music in which character enactment is possible, operas are audio-visual fictions. Content is determined not only by what we hear but also by what we see.”1
According to this definition, opera is distinguished from other vocal art forms by its audio-visual characteristics: both the audio and visual elements determine the fiction and story we are presented. Both aural and visual information and impressions are crucial for the construction of the drama.
The author points out how the genre has always had a strong focus on narrative and storytelling, even when other art forms found new ground by abandoning narrative structures and ideals through the last century. She points out that non-narrative operas do exist but that these are seen as the exception that confirms the rule by “[…] their denial of our expectation for storytelling”2
In her argumentation towards her definition, Penner refers to Plato’s mimesis (enacting or showing) and diegesis (telling). This way she shows the main difference between opera and other vocal music genres that tell stories: in songs the singer usually describes or recalls what is happening and how the characters have acted or are acting. It is the narrator telling us a story. In opera on the other hand, the singers show what is happening through enacting: “[…] singers’ utterances represent characters’ utterances, and singers’ actions represent characters’ actions.”3
The last part of Penner’s definition points to another important feature of opera: “Finally, opera may be differentiated from non-musical theatre and film by the fact that singing is one of [the] main ways opera characters communicate.”4 Meaning that in opera the main tool of communication for the characters is singing. The genre establishes a world and story where singing is the natural and preferred way to address the audience and the other characters. Whether or not the characters actually hear the singing or the music is a question much debated within opera studies. Penner points out that if the audience’s main reason to see opera is to experience stories, they would benefit from viewing the characters as hearing their and other’s singing. She argues that this strengthens the plot of many operas because it makes it easier to believe the characters and their motivation to sing. Not everything in the plot is believable through the libretto alone. Some actions are only explainable through the emotional colour the music and the character’s singing characteristics give them.
In this regard, an important ingredient in opera is accepting the fiction it creates. In order to understand the story we are presented with, we must accept the fiction it is told within.
Because we know we are watching an opera, we expect the singing and the world it creates. Who or what is telling the story can shift: a character, a narrator outside of the story, the orchestra (as in the overture) or in the music itself (leitmotif). I see that there is a potential for abstract expression in this art form, since so much of the communication of the narrative relies on the combination of the different elements: the combination of visual and audio. So what happens if we focus on these abstract qualities in the genre and remove the story it is telling? Can we take away the narrative and only present the fiction? Would there still be a fraction of opera? Does it still tell a story?
In the lecture “Aesthetics of Absence: Questioning Basic Assumptions in Performing Arts” by the German stage director Heiner Goebbels from 2010, he reflects on how theatre and opera largely depend on the “[…] classic concept of the artistic experience in terms of direct presence and personal intensity.”5 Meaning the idea that we need a strong protagonist personified on stage to tell something. This, he says, is built around the secure actor performing its role. He calls this the expressive protagonist. This can be any kind of performer embodying the role on stage; an actor, singer, dancer or musician.
He continues by making the following observation:
Theatre and opera refuse to consider their classic assumptions. Occasionally they will change the text of a play, sometimes they change the sound of an opera, but never more than this. And speaking as someone who knows the gravity of educational institutions for actors and directors, I can reassure you this will go on for a while ...6
He suggests that there is an unwillingness in the established classical theatre and opera world to break with these norms. He also reflects on how the strong protagonist is a traditionally important ingredient: “In traditional theatre, which is based on literature, and in opera subjects in the audience recognize themselves in the actor or singer or dancer on stage; they identify themselves with the performers and mirror themselves in them.”7 In Goebbels search for absence in his pieces he manages to do the opposite, by either reducing or removing the actor or role on stage. This way he manages to free himself from the classical paradigm of the artform. He breaks with the audience’s expectations of what theatre should or could be and forces the audience to perceive it in a new light.
Goebbels reflects on this in the framework of his own works. In some pieces he creates contrasts that break with the norms of the narrative, creating “ […] blank spaces for the spectator’s imagination.” He explains, through citing Friedrich Hölderlin, how these blank spaces, or distances between the different material, manage to keep together through poetic logic.
Because Geobbel’s pieces are built by combining different elements, presented either after or on top of each other, they do not follow a traditional linear narrative. Instead, they rely on the audience to interpret the connection between them and fill in these blank spaces with their imagination. They are therefore combined through what he refers to as poetic logic. In contrast to philosophical or analytical logic, the poetic logic “lays claim to many of our perceptive abilities.”8 It is something that creates logic or meaning through the way it is understood by different senses. Through the combination of these senses a logic is built and interpreted by the spectator. About his own style of work Goebbels comments:
In such theatre the spectator is involved in a drama of experience rather than looking at drama in which psychologically motivated relationships are represented by figures on stage. This is a drama of perception, a drama of one’s senses, as in those quite powerful confrontations of all the elements - stage, light, music, words - in which the actor has to survive, not to act. So the drama of the “media” is actually a double drama here: a drama for the actor as well as a drama for the perception of the audience.9
These ideas greatly inspire me as they offer a different way to look at opera and stage art. It suggests another way of building a concept and performance. One that offers flexibility and gives space for intuition and play, making this possible by not being fixed to a set narrative or story. Instead, the combination of theatrical elements; lights, stage, performance, sound, song, text, are creating a drama of their own. There can be a friction between the audience, the work and the performer(s), and this friction can create another idea of fiction.
However, this requires a different starting point and method. Without a finished work, like a theatre play or an opera, I will have to create a different framework for my process of building a performance.
Nina Penner offers different ways of looking and talking about interpretations of operatic works. They can also provide another view of the process and creation of performance. She points out how scholars and directors have a growing interest in talking about how to stay true or not to the “Werktreue” (fidelity to the work).10 As an answer to the many approaches and examples of artistic interpretations, she offers the following main paradigms for contemporary opera: work-performances and performance-works. This is relevant to my work as it offers a structure to understand my own project in relation to the opera genre.
Work-performances follow what Penner calls The Classical Paradigm. These are works that are examples of the piece they are based upon. An instance of that work. As Penner describes it: “[A]n instance [of a work] provides audiences with an experience of the work by making manifest if not all of the properties that have bearing on the work’s appreciation, then at least a good many of them.”11 It requires a portion of fidelity to the work it is based upon. Penner points out that this does not mean fidelity strictly to the text of the work, the music and libretto, but can also mean staying true to other aspects of the original work: This can be portraying the narrative in the same manner, delivering the same moral conclusion to the plot, recreating historical or social backgrounds or situations that accompanied the original performance of the work. It can also mean making a specific historical aspect understandable for a modern-day audience by translating it into a modern-day equivalent.
Penner sums it up with the following: “Work-performances not only must be faithful to the work’s point but also must convey that point through a moderately faithful performance of the work’s plot and score”12
Performance-works, on the other hand, follow what Penner refers to as The Ingredients Model. This is a term she has borrowed from theatre theorists, among them James Hamilton. She describes it as “[i]nstead of regarding theatre performances as mere executions of pre-existing works, the production is regarded as a work in its own right, one that may or may not employ pre-existing works as ingredients”13 With the focus on ingredients, the different parts the performance is built with, this resembles the way Goebbels talks about his own work. Instead of basing it on an already made work, the performance is constructed with several already existing parts. This allows the creator to be freer with the balance between hers/his own original material and pre-existing material. The elements can then be brought together with the spaces Goebbels calls poetic logic.
Penner argues that this is a model of understanding that we can adopt to opera productions. There are several examples of these types of works in the opera world. Penner points to the practice of cutting and substituting in operas in the 1800s. She also argues that contemporary opera productions like Neuenfels’s Fledermaus, Konwitschny’s Meistersinger and Sellars’s Indian Queen are easier to regard as performance-works. Both due to the amount of deviation from the original score and plot, and because of the director’s intention of creating something new, with a different point or message.14
Performance art
This is an art form that today can mean many things. The term has its roots in the conceptual art movement from the 1960-70s where the emphasis was on the development of the artistic idea rather than the art product as a commodity. As a reactionary form of artistic action Performance art was described as being a new form of art; something that took art out and away from the galleries, the collectors and the museums and gave the artist the freedom to become the artworks themselves, through action. Throughout the 1970´s, performance art became so popular that several art institutions embraced this new art form and opportunities like performance festivals, happenings and shows were established in both small galleries and larger museums. Soon it became a term and form of artistic expression recognised on the same level as other fine arts. However, the history of performative art is much longer and older than the term and genre coined in the 1960s. In many ways this type of expression is as old as human expression, because in its core is the act of expression.15
In the book Performance art from futurism to the present by RoseLee Goldberg, the author signifies the start of the history of performance art as being at the beginning of the 20th century with the Futurists in Italy. This movement, with its many manifestos, called for an art that was action based. The artist, or specifically the painter at that time should participate in the action of art, which should be provocative and violent. This evolved into theatrical pieces where the goal was to provoke the audience and bring down the classical paradigms of art.16
In many respects, the futurist theatres built on traditional theatre had links to opera through their mutual ancestor: Commedia dell’arte. With its stylized characters and plots, this Italian theatre tradition has inspired both comic and serious opera.17 What one can argue was new with the futurists was their desire to break with tradition and style, to create new art for the new world.18
Another art movement that explored performative practices was the Dada movement. Inspired by the Italian Futurists, the term Dada emerged with a growing avant-garde cabaret scene in Zurich. Inspired by the genre, which was highly popular in Germany in the first decades of the 20th century, the café-cabaret event Cabaret Voltaire was founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in 1916. Their shows would consist of live poetry, music and dance, and collected a group of experimental artists and poets, who each defined the Dada expression in their own way. Among them: Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara and Hans Richter.19 Similarly, the surrealist movement started with events and live art in Paris around the same time, and later merging with Dada artists, this way of exploring artistic expression through action and performative artforms like theatre, dance and music spread through Europe and the Western World.20
A further course was set in the 1920s when the German art school Bauhaus incorporated stage work in their education. Through their holistic view on interdisciplinary art’s potential, a redefinition of what performative art could be was made possible. The early works, developed through Bauhaus’ many festivals, were seeking to combine several artforms through their playful way of creating stage works. With the use of experimental costumes, dance and movement, and by challenging the paradigms of traditional theatre, the student and teachers of Bauhaus explored not only one but several artistic domains. Inspired by the Dadaists, these works would also often use parody and satire. Based on the interdisciplinary ideas at Bauhaus, they started to explore the performance space as an architectural space. This led to a geometrical and gestural exploration of movement and dance.21
In the decades after the Second World War, performance art had developed into a myriad of directions and expressions. In the context of this research, I will only point to a few important names that worked on the borderline between performance and music and are relevant to this work.
John Cage became an important composer from the 1950s and onwards through his redefinition of music. He said that any sound could be music and introduced the notion that the noise we hear in our everyday life is music and therefore equal to the music composed by any composer. This led him to explore these sounds in his own compositions and challenge the way we listen and interpret music. This led him also to interdisciplinary and performative work where the actions of the performers themselves played an equally important role as to the music they performed in his pieces.22
Another New York based composer and artist that became important from the 1960s onward is Meredith Monk. Inspired by the form of happenings that had developed in the US, she explored how many performers could perform in different locations and with different material at the same time, creating multi-layered and interdisciplinary work.23 Monk is known for her exploration of the voice and its extended technique, challenging this through her compositions.24
Robert Wilson is an American artist and stage director that has worked with stylized performative theatre and opera. Working within the traditional forms of theatre and stage, Wilson has introduced approaches to develop and create pieces for stage. His Einstein on the Beach from 1976 was a collaboration with American composer Phillip Glass and dancer Lucinda Childs, and was a huge international success, challenging the paradigms of opera.25
American artist and musician Laurie Anderson became an important voice in the field of music and performance art. Music and the act of performing sound was from the outset a central part of her work.26 In 1982, she presented her eight-hour multimedia performance piece United States. Some parts of this performance became iconic songs, where she used a vocoder (voice processed synthesizer). This and later performances were constructed with smaller pieces gathered as a sequence of scenes or songs.27
By presenting a brief overview of the development of performance art and some central names within the genre, I wish to place my project and research within this historic context. I take with me several concepts and ideas from this tradition into my artistic work to challenge how I think about and perform my repertoire. This will help me explore other sides to Handel’s music as well as historical and stylistic aspects.
Handel and the opera
The shaping of Handel’s dramatical music through the staging of one of his operas or oratorios seems to spark debate and create a division of opinions. Questions of authenticity and modernization seem to be the first aspects on the agenda when staging is discussed and has been since the first revivals of operas in the last century.28 A recurring feature is productions where the music is focused on historical accuracy, while the staging and production is embossed with modern styles and contemporary themes. These practices arise debate about how historically informed performance should be treated in a staged production. Andrew V. Jones points out this tendency in his article ‘Staging a Handel opera’ in the following manner:
The combination of a historically aware musical performance with a production style which— whether consciously or not—ignores the composer’s instructions and the conventions of his day is now such a common feature of Handel opera performances that it has almost become the norm. Certainly, it is seen as a selling-point […]29
Jones continues by pointing out the challenge with time and history: there are several social structures and norms that are no longer present in our time. This is of course one of the big challenges with working with historical artefacts and brings us to the questions of historical presentation and contextualization.
In Winton Dean’s and John Merrill Knapp’s Handel’s Operas 1704-1726, we can find a similar sense of disappointment in the treatment of Handel’s operas in modern day performance as the one Andrew Jones portrays. In their first chapter Dean and Knapp spend some time on commenting on the lack of historical and stylistic knowledge due to ignorance, they argue. They point to the changes of fashion throughout the history of opera, and that because the artform has changed so much over the decades they argue that we should seek to fully understand the historic context in which it was created.30 Andrew V. Jones argues for the same in his article from 2006, calling for a more detailed knowledge and exploration of the historical aspects of Handel’s operas, not only the music but also the acting and staging of the piece. Jones points to the early music movement stating that we have established a style of performing the music that is expected and familiar to the audience. Orchestras play with period instruments and singers are expected to understand and perform in the correct style. Jones proposes that the reason this is not expected of acting and staging is that it is neglected as something the audience are not familiar with, something alienating.31
The history of Handel’s operas is an interesting one. It shows how the genre opera seria (Italian, meaning serious opera)32 developed through the 18th century and how Handel drew inspiration from different styles and national opera traditions. He was born in Germany and started his working career in Hamburg, where the opera house was dominated by a mix of traditions and styles.33 While the French opera had developed into an independent style from the Italian, the genre had not manifested the same independence in England and Germany. In these countries the opera houses drew inspiration from Italy and the Italian style, mixed with some local fashions.
At Handel’s time, Italian operas were written for specific theatres, singers and audiences. If the opera was revived somewhere els, it would be heavily altered to fit the other theatre’s cast and situation. The pasticcio, a show where arias from existing operas from different composers was put together based on some pre-existing libretto, were also very popular at this time. This gives us a hint of how the genre was seen and treated at the time. The music in an opera was not a fixed entity or bound by its original form. Handel also revived his operas in the same manner. If the opera was revived some years after its first run, he might have a different cast and would have to adapt the music to these other singers. This often resulted in rewriting or transposing some arias or whole characters. Dean Winton and John Merrill Knapp argue that two of his operas, Tolomeo and Il pastor fido, became in fact pasticcios by the way they were reassembled with other material both by himself and other composers in their revivals in 1730 and 1734. Arias would travel from opera to opera, or from character to character. There are also examples where Handel took more time to rewrite a whole role, as when he rewrote Sesto in Giulio Cesare in 1725 from a soprano to a tenor role “[…] creating a radically different character.”34
Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp continue by arguing that the aspect of the revivals and pasticcios are best ignored, as Handel shows great artistic integrity and effort in the creation of new operas and because the revivals “[…] suggests all too faithfully the stereotype that has brought the whole of opera seria into contempt.”35 However, the fact that the operas were not treated as sacred objects of some true art, implies that they had another view on the work itself. The opera was a work that served a purpose and could be cut and altered according to both the practical and artistic framework of the situation in which it was to be performed. I would argue that this idea does not undermine the qualities that Handel’s opera possesses as it seems Dean and Knapp are afraid of.
At the turn of the 17th to the 18th century, the dominant form within the opera seria style was the aria. The recitative had been detached from the aria and they now served clear purposes: the recitative should drive the story and the aria should display the emotion.36 To bring further structure to the scenes the da capo (Italian for ‘from the head’ or 'from the beginning')37 aria was developed, building up the scene to the aria’s climax and the singers exit from the stage.
In this way the entrance and exits of characters were managed by the form of the scenes.38 This led to longer arias and a more static form where the focus was turned towards the singer and the vocal performance. Dean and Knapp point to this as the reason for the bad reputation this style of opera incurred:
The apparent ossification of the extended and formalized da capo aria is responsible for received opinion that the opera seria of Handel’s day could not possibly be a viable dramatic form. We are told that even in its own time it was regarded less as a living art than as a species of circus entertainment for a public that came to applaud the singer and perhaps the aria but took no interest in the opera as a dramatic unity.39
Handel adopted and developed the form, taking great care to drive the story through the expressive build-up of each scene. The arias would express the different sides to a character and guide the audience through the character’s emotional journey and development in the opera. The da capo aria with its A and B sections gave the possibility to explore the emotions. To keep the drama going, the B section would contrast or confirm the A section giving new energy and clarity to the repeated A section (da capo).40 In this way Handel managed to create deeper characters that both show a distinct identity and different emotional colours and contrasts.
Equally interesting to the parts and arias where Handel follows the form of the da capo aria, are the ones where he does not. In the earlier operas we find that Handel wouldn’t completely stick to the alternation of recitative and aria, instead having “[…] set pieces merge into one another to create dramatic climaxes […].”41 In other later operas we find choruses and ballets, and several arias without a da capo (e.g. Serse).42
Throughout the operas he would work with contrasts and surprises, building up expectancies for something only to surprise by introducing a different emotion or dramatic turn. The surprises could happen subtly in the music, be a clear change of emotion and intention or take the form of a complete change in the story and the drama. In this way the style of opera seria is constantly commented, contrasted or followed in Handel’s music.
This music was written for the advanced baroque theatre, where scenic effects played an important part. The music was only one of several important elements. The scene changes would happen in clear view. The curtain would go up after the overture and only go down after the last scene. The music was therefore not interrupted by scene changes but continued through them. The changes would be written into the music. Switches of tonality would emphasize important changes and propel the drama forward into the next scene.43
The singers were required to perform the arias with the according passion or Affekt (from Affektlehre) and the acting had to follow. This was a stylised way of portraying emotion with the goal of heightening the expression of the passion that was communicated. This was a theatrical way of delivering the story and should not be a realistic representation of the characters actions.44 Andrew V. Jones points out that similarly as to how the style of the music was explored for expressive effect through breaking with the expected norms, the acting could also challenge or play with the norms of the style:
If the great majority of da capo arias begin with an orchestral ritornello, one that opens with a phrase for unaccompanied voice will have a striking impact; if most arm movements are restricted to the space between the level of the shoulders and that of the waist, a clenched fist held high above the head will be positively shocking.45
Most of the characters in these operas were also royal or of high social or military rank. This reflected the aristocracy and royalty of the audience and was therefore expected. The costumes were usually quite contemporary. The women would wear ballroom dresses of the latest fashion. The men, however, would have more stylised attire inspired by classical Roman style. This would be tunics, breast plates, helmets and long cloaks. They would wear swords on stage, like the men in the audience also would.46
Dance in Handel’s operas
Dance in operas at Handel’s time came from a variety of traditions and inspirations. In Italy dance had played a part in the earlier operas in the 17th century emphasising comical or supernatural characters. How this was applied varied from theatre to theatre and city to city. In Venice, which was a natural source of inspiration for Handel during his London years, dance was not directly connected to the plot. It served more as a comment on the theme of the opera, and would be used for wedding scenes, ballroom scenes or military games like gladiators. By the time the opera seria had established its more fixed form, the dances were not needed for scene changes and variation so much.47
In Hamburg, at the time Handel worked there, though they adopted the Italian style of opera, they did not follow the same norms when it came to dance. This might be explained by the comic nature of some of the operas at the time, but a clearer influence came from the French opera tradition. In France the court dance La belle danse had become a strong tradition and established an important position in French opera. There the dances had specific functions in the scenes, between solos or duets and usually finished by a chorus. The French way of integrating dance with the singing fuelled inspiration for the Hamburg opera. Some choreographers from the Paris opera were also hired at the Hamburg opera. There are examples in later operas by Handel that show that this inspiration from French opera dance was something he brought with him to London.48
In London dance was a natural ingredient in many theatrical genres. Masques and dramatic plays had long relied on dance to recreate and emphasize both comical, supernatural and dramatic spectacles on stage. However, they had no norms for how they would be added to the music. There was no tradition, like in France, that could guide them in the same way.49