1st Edition
New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera The Practitioners’ Perspectives
New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera is the first and only book that approaches the dramaturgy of contemporary opera from the unique perspectives of living practitioners (composers, librettists, directors, producers, singers, dramaturgs, administrators) who provide valuable first-hand insight into the coming into being of an opera today.
The edited collection captures the ethos of contemporary opera-making in the global context and serves as a timely intervention in addressing the array of heterogenous dramaturgical practices that goes into making an opera today in an era of flux. The collection is split into four parts: Part I presents the new dramaturgical considerations that the field is currently exploring; Part II investigates the ways in which non-Western cultures and perspectives can and have been represented; Part III explores the roles of space, nature, and environment in contemporary opera and finally Part IV looks at the ways in which technology has intersected with the creation of contemporary opera.
With perspectives from practitioners throughout, this collection is essential reading for advanced students, researchers, and scholars of contemporary opera as well as practicing dramaturgs in this field.
About the contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Contemporary Opera and New Dramaturgies
JINGYI ZHANG
PART I: New Dramaturgical Considerations
1. Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative: The First Ten Years.
KELLEY ROURKE
2. An Interview with Beth Morrison
BETH MORRISON & JINGYI ZHANG
3. Seeking the Philosopher’s Stone: On the Alchemy of Time in Creative Dramaturgy
DAVID T. LITTLE
PART II: Representing Non-Western Cultures and Perspectives
4. Musicalizing the World: Dramaturgical Considerations of Non-Western Culture in Contemporary Opera
KAMALA SANKARAM
5. Interrogating Operatic Decolonization in the Hypermobility Turn: Sweet Land (2020) and Twilight: Gods (2020-21)
JINGYI ZHANG
6. An Interview with Du Yun
DU YUN & JINGYI ZHANG
PART III: Site-Specific Dramaturgies
7. Landscape Dramaturgy and (Post)opera: Singing After Perspective
JELENA NOVAK
8. Pastoral Paradox: Staging Ted Hearne’s Farming (2023) and Kate Soper’s The Hunt (2023)
ASHLEY TATA
9. An Interview with Pamela Z
PAMELA Z & JINGYI ZHANG
PART IV: Creative Possibilities of Transmedia Dramaturgy
10. Tradition, Transmedia, and Music in Contemporary Japanese Performing Arts
KRISZTINA ROSNER
11. Biometrics, AI, Embodiment, Performative Practices and The New Dramaturgy
ELLEN PEARLMAN
12. An Interview with Noa Frenkel
NOA FRENKEL & JINGYI ZHANG
Biography
Jingyi Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on music, race, and anti-colonial thought by engaging with epistemologies of historically marginalized subjects in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
