Full Description
There can be little doubt that opera and emotion are inextricably linked. From dramatic plots driven by energetic producers and directors to the conflicts and triumphs experienced by all associated with opera's staging to the reactions and critiques of audience members, emotion is omnipresent in opera. Yet few contemplate the impact that the customary cultural practices of specific times and places have upon opera's ability to move emotions. Taking Australia as a case study, this two-volume collection of extended essays demonstrates that emotional experiences, discourses, displays and expressions do not share universal significance but are at least partly produced, defined, and regulated by culture. Spanning approximately 170 years of opera production in Australia, the authors show how the emotions associated with the specific cultural context of a nation steeped in egalitarian aspirations and marked by increasing levels of multiculturalism have adjusted to changing cultural and social contexts across time. Volume I adopts an historical, predominantly nineteenth-century perspective, while Volume II applies historical, musicological, and ethnological approaches to discuss subsequent Australian operas and opera productions through to the twenty-first century. With final chapters pulling threads from the two volumes together, Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes establishes a model for constructing emotion history from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
Contents
Part 1 Australian Composers and their Operas
Chapter 1: From European Romantic to "Wild Colonial Boy"? John Antill and Post-Colonial Australian Opera
David Symons
Chapter 2 The Voice of Emotion in Contemporary Australian Opera
Michael Halliwell
Chapter 3: Translating Page to Stage: Creating Emotionally Engaging Opera for Children
Emma Jayakumar
Chapter 4: Speechless: An Operatic Response to Human Rights Abuse in Twenty-first-century Australia
Joel Crotty and Cat Hope
Chapter 5: The Divorce: A Soap Opera
Helen Rusak
Part 2 Antipodean Performance and Practice
Chapter 6: From Patriotism to Alterity: Charting the Australian experience of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
Jane W. Davidson and Stephanie Rocke
Chapter 7: "Lamento d'Arianna": A Transhistorical Study of Staged Emotions and Affective Audience Responses
Daniela Kaleva
Chapter 8: Assembling Voyage to the Moon: Emotion, Creativity and Historicity in a New Australian Opera
Joseph Browning and Jane W Davidson
Chapter 9: Emotion as Multiple: Rehearsing Voyage to the Moon
Joseph Browning
Part 3 Collection Conclusions
Chapter 10: Antipodean Classification, the Emotions of Othering and Multiculturalism
Stephanie Rocke
Chapter 11: What have we learnt about Emotions?
Jane W. Davidson, Michael Halliwell and Stephanie Rocke
