Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater. Nina Penner

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ present, more capable of interpersonal connection, more empowered, more empowering, and generally better to effect transformative change.”²⁹ Successfully singing a duet involves a high degree of mutual attention, responsiveness, and support for each other’s actions. Imagining that Violetta and Germont’s conversation is conducted through music helps explain how they are able to form an emotional connection and harmonize their points of view in such a short amount of time.

      Supposing that the characters are either not singing or that they fail to hear much of the music creates problems when one attempts to explain how the characters know the things that they do. Real-life opera spectators learn about opera characters not merely from the words they say but also from the music they make. The same is true of opera characters, I have argued elsewhere.³⁰

      The dominant view of operatic communication also limits the possible ways of explaining instances when characters have a musical-stylistic influence over one another.³¹ The ostensible plot of the musical My Fair Lady (1956) revolves around Eliza learning to speak “proper English” from Professor Higgins. By the end, however, it is clear that Higgins has learned just as much from Eliza about being a character in a musical. Higgins is initially incapable of conforming his songs to conventional song forms. Furthermore, the role was created by the nonsinging actor Rex Harrison, who performed most of his songs in a kind of Sprechstimme. His final song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” displays much more formal coherence than his earlier songs “Why Can’t the English?” and “A Hymn to Him” and, in the 1964 film adaptation, shows Higgins at his most lyrical.

      If the characters do not hear the music, we cannot explain Higgins’s transformation as resulting from him hearing Eliza’s music and being influenced by its greater lyricism and formal coherence (an internal explanation). Rather, we are forced to regard his increasing musicality as part of the composer Frederick Loewe’s attempts to demonstrate his growing attraction to and suitability for Eliza (an external explanation).³² Regarding the characters as singing and as hearing each other’s music allows for both types of explanation. It opens up the possibility that Eliza chooses to sing in a particular way and that Higgins models his subsequent songs on hers. Internal explanations, which elucidate the features of a narrative in terms of the actions and intentions of its characters, rather than merely those of its real-life author(s), endow characters with more agency. In light of the importance of agency to compelling characters, and thus compelling narratives, regarding opera characters as singing and as hearing the music may increase one’s appreciation of the stories operas tell.³³

      There are cases where it is not reasonable to regard the characters as intending or perceiving all of the meanings their performances may have for us. This is especially true of the orchestral music in Wagner, a situation that I will return to in chapter 4. However, hearing need not entail understanding, and utterances, in opera as in everyday life, may possess meanings that are not intended by their authors. External explanations—for instance, viewing the music as authorial commentary—are still available to interpreters who regard opera characters as hearing the music and as singing intentionally.

      By suggesting that the default position in opera is that characters hear the music, even when they fail to explicitly acknowledge its presence, I may appear to be undercutting a distinction that has become central to opera studies: the distinction between phenomenal and noumenal music, in Abbate’s terminology, and diegetic and nondiegetic music, in terminology borrowed from film studies. In opera and musical-theater studies, phenomenal or diegetic music refers to music that takes place in realistic performance contexts or that is explicitly acknowledged as music by the fictional characters, such as the cantata in Tosca (1900) or Cherubino’s aria “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro (1786). Cherubino reveals that he is the composer of this song, and the Countess convinces him to perform it for her with guitar accompaniment provided by Susanna. Since the character does not profess to have authored his other aria, “Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio,” nor is it acknowledged as a performance of song, it is typically regarded as noumenal or nondiegetic music.

      Distinguishing between these two types of music can be important to understanding composers’ musical-stylistic choices. Opera composers frequently take care to differentiate these two types of performance. Diegetic or phenomenal music is more likely to conform to conventional song forms. It may also be more simplistic or less skillful than the noumenal or nondiegetic music, particularly if its actual composer wishes us to regard its fictional composer as possessing only modest talents. Furthermore, if the opera is set in the past or in a foreign land, the diegetic music is likely to take on characteristics of the music of its fictional setting, whereas the nondiegetic music is likely to remain unmarked.

      My concern is with the terms that have been chosen to describe this difference. Abbate’s phenomenal-noumenal distinction suggests that the noumenal music is not part of the opera’s fictional world. Additionally, current use of the diegetic-nondiegetic distinction in opera and musical-theater studies is at odds with the use of these terms in film studies. Film scholars use the adjective diegetic to refer to features of the audiovisual display that represent contents or occurrences in the fictional world of the film. This definition leads to logical problems when combined with opera scholars’ equation of diegetic music with realistic music.³⁴ Regarding all of the unrealistic instances of music-making in an opera as nondiegetic is untenable, since many such songs are integral to the work’s plot. In keeping with my aim to avoid jargon, I will refer to so-called phenomenal or diegetic performances as embedded or nested musical performances.

      There are many reasons to attend the opera: for the opportunity to hear one’s favorite singer, for the extravagant sets and costumes, for the jokes, or for its purely musical delights. Before Wagner dimmed the lights in the auditorium, it was also possible to go for the people watching, gambling, and other diversions. Another reason to attend the opera is for the stories operas tell. If that is one’s interest, regarding opera characters as singing and as hearing each other’s songs is a distinct advantage. It alleviates concerns about the implausibility of many opera plots. Violetta’s choice to sacrifice her future with Alfredo may seem undermotivated if it were to happen in our world or even the world of a spoken play or film. Regarding her exchange with Alfredo’s father as a duet renders it more plausible, as the act of singing together is capable of forging emotional bonds more effectively than spoken discourse. Understanding the characters as singing and as hearing the music also allows for explanations of characters’ behavior that are grounded in the characters’ intentions and actions, as opposed to merely those of the work’s authors.

      The foregoing investigation into the nature of operatic storytelling has revealed the following medium-specific features. 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 audiovisual fictions. Content is determined not only by what we hear but also by what we see. Finally, opera may be differentiated from nonmusical theater and film by the fact that singing is one of main ways opera characters communicate.

      The following chapter continues exploring the medium-specific features of storytelling in the musical theater by defining several common types of character-narrators and discussing the ways in which they differ from the kinds of narrators audiences encounter in literary and cinematic works.

      Notes

      1. Monika Hennemann, “Operatorio?” in Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen M. Greenwald (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 77. Hennemann is responding to the Komische Oper’s production of Mozart’s Requiem, directed by Sebastian Baumgarten (2008).

      2. Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 21.

      3. David Davies, “Medium,” in СКАЧАТЬ