Digital Scenography in Opera in the Twenty-First Century is the first definitive study of the use of digital scenography in Western opera production. The book begins by exploring digital scenography’s dramaturgical possibilities and establishes a critical framework for identifying and comparing the use of digital scenography across different digitally enhanced opera productions. The book then investigates the impacts and potential disruptions of digital scenography on opera’s longstanding production conventions, both on and off the stage. Drawing on interviews with major industry practitioners, including Paul Barritt, Mark Grimmer, Donald Holder, Elaine J. McCarthy, Luke Halls, Wendall K. Harrington, Finn Ross, S. Katy Tucker, and Victoria ‘Vita’ Tzykun, author Caitlin Vincent identifies key correlations between the use of digital scenography in practice and subsequent impacts on creative hierarchies, production design processes, and organisational management. The book features detailed case studies of digitally enhanced productions premiered by Dutch National Opera, Komische Oper Berlin, Opéra de Lyon, The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, The Metropolitan Opera, Victorian Opera, and Washington National Opera.

"From the early days of radio broadcast to today's recorded simulcasts and live online productions, opera houses have embraced technology as a way to reach new audiences. But how do these new forms of remediated opera extend, amplify, or undermine production values, and what does the audience gain or lose in the process? In Screening the Operatic Stage, Christopher Morris critically examines the cultural implications of opera's engagement with screen media. Foregrounding a playful exchange and self-awareness between stage and screen, Screening the Operatic Stage analyzes how opera sees itself on video. Morris uses the conceptual tools of media theory to understand the historical and contemporary screen cultures that have transmitted the opera house into living rooms, onto desktops and portable devices, and across networks of movie theaters. These screen cultures reveal how inherently "technological" opera is as a medium, begging the question of whether it can be understood independently of technology. Ultimately, Screening the Operatic Stage shows how the technologies of televisual representation employed in opera reinforce its audience's expectations for the genre"--

This book addresses the neglect of visual creativities and content, and how these are commercialised in the music industries. While musical and visual creativities drive growth, there is a lack of literature relating to the visual side of the music business, which is significant given that the production of meaning and value within this business occurs across a number of textual sites. Popular music is a multimedia, discursive, fluid, and expansive cultural form that, in addition to the music itself, includes album covers; gig and tour posters; music videos; set, stage, and lighting designs; live concert footage; websites; virtual reality/augmented reality technologies; merchandise designs; and other forms of visual content. As a result, it has become impossible to understand the meaning and value of music without considering its relation to these visual components and to the interrelationships between them. Using design culture theory, participant observation, interviews, case studies, and a visual methodology to explore the topic, this research-based book is a valuable study aid for undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including the music business, design, arts management, creative and cultural industries studies, business and management studies, and media and communications.

Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas features chapters by a group of scholars and performers of varied backgrounds and specialties, who confront the various questions raised by Monteverdi’s late operas from an interdisciplinary perspective. The premise of the volume is the idea that constructive dialogue between musicologists and musicians, stage directors and theater historians, as well as philologists and literary critics can shed new light on Monteverdi’s two Venetian operas (and their respective librettos, by Badoaro and Busenello), not only at the levels of textual criticism, historical exegesis, and dramaturgy, but also with regard to concrete choices of performance, staging, and mise-en-scène. Following an Introduction setting up the interdisciplinary agenda, the volume comprises two main parts: ‘Contexts and Sources’ deals with the historical, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts of the works - librettos and scores; 'Performance and Interpretation’ offers critical and historical insights regarding the casting, singing, reciting, staging, and conducting of the two operas. This volume will appeal to scholars and researchers in Opera Studies and Music History as well as be of interest to early music performers and all those involved with presenting opera on stage.

In recent years, interest in Rameau’s operas has grown enormously. These works are no longer regarded as peripheral by performers and audiences but are increasingly staged in the world’s major opera houses and festivals, while the production of first-rate recordings on CD and DVD continues to flourish. Such welcome developments have gone hand in hand with an upsurge in research on Rameau and his period. The present volume, devoted solely to the composer’s operas, reflects this scholarly activity. It brings together a substantial group of essays by an international team of scholars on a wide range of aspects of Rameau’s operas. The individual essays are informed by a variety of disciplines or sub-disciplines including literature, archival studies, musical analysis, gender studies, ballet and choreography, dramaturgy and staging. The contents are addressed to a wide readership, including not only scholars but also practical musicians, stage directors, dancers and choreographers.

The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766–1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth before, and this book presents a large number of new sources (first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi’s portrayal with a study of the opera’s early German reception and performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and violent villain we still encounter in most of today’s stage productions. Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies, music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.

"This volume advances understanding of the nature of current inequalities in the field of classical music production in the Global North, exploring why inequalities continue to exist, and asking what can be done to tackle ongoing exclusions. It constitutes an urgent intervention into these contemporary debates, drawing together ongoing and emergent analyses from scholars, activists and musicians in a variety of countries across Europe and North America to foreground both scholarly examination of these inequalities, alongside discussion of strategies and catalysts for change. Academic accounts investigate inequalities in higher education and the classical music industry, exploring racial, class and gender inequalities, 'authenticity', disability representation, changing the canon, and neoliberalism. The book also includes interviews with those working in the classical music industry where they reflect on issues of diversity and share insights and inspiration as well as good practice, putting into dialogue scholarly and industry-based accounts. Themes of the book include institutional legacies and possibilities for change; racial, gender and class inequalities and marginalised voices; and strategies for activism whether reflective practices, informal networks, or larger organisations leading change"--

20 Seasons: Broadway Musicals of the 21st Century catalogues, categorizes, and analyzes the 269 musicals that opened on Broadway from the 2000-2001 season through the 2019-2020 season. This book is the first to comprehensively examine the musicals that premiered on Broadway during this important historical period, which was bookended by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on one end and the Coronavirus pandemic on the other. It begins by exploring the historical context for the first 20 years of the 21st century and how this impacted American culture and theatre. Rather than chronologically, the musicals are then organized into categories based on their source material and whether they were original musicals or revivals, painting a detailed picture of the Broadway musical in first 20 years of the 21st century. Jukebox musicals, screen-to-stage musicals, revivals, and other original musicals are all covered, and each chapter ends with reading guides and discussion prompts. The book not only discusses what was produced, but by whom, uncovering the stark lack of representation for women and artists of color on Broadway musical creative and design teams. Additionally, the last chapter discusses the COVID-19 pandemic, the Broadway shutdown, and what happened to the Broadway musical during the shutdown, including the response to the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020. 20 Seasons: Broadway Musicals of the 21st Century will appeal to fans and scholars of musical theatre, as well as students of Musical Theatre, Musical Theatre History, American Studies, and Pop Culture Studies.

The Routledge Companion to Scenography is the largest and most comprehensive collection of original essays to survey the historical, conceptual, critical and theoretical aspects of this increasingly important aspect of theatre and performance studies. Editor and leading scholar Arnold Aronson brings together a uniquely valuable anthology of texts especially commissioned from across the discipline of theatre and performance studies. Establishing a stable terminology for a deeply contested term for the first time, this volume looks at scenography as the totality of all the visual, spatial and sensory aspects of performance. Tracing a line from Aristotle’s Poetics down to Brecht and Artaud and into contemporary immersive theatre and digital media, The Routledge Companion to Scenography is a vital addition to every theatre library.

This is a comprehensive overview of contemporary European theatre and performance as it enters the third decade of the twenty-first century. It combines critical discussions of key concepts, practitioners, and trends within theatre-making, both in particular countries and across borders, that are shaping European stage practice. With the geography, geopolitics, and cultural politics of Europe more unsettled than at any point in recent memory, this book’s combination of national and thematic coverage offers a balanced understanding of the continent’s theatre and performance cultures. Employing a range of methodologies and critical approaches across its three parts and ninety-four chapters, this book’s first part contains a comprehensive listing of European nations, the second part charts responses to thematic complexes that define current European performance, and the third section gathers a series of case studies that explore the contribution of some of Europe’s foremost theatre makers. Rather than rehearsing rote knowledge, this is a collection of carefully curated, interpretive accounts from an international roster of scholars and practitioners. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance gives undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers and practitioners an indispensable reference resource that can be used broadly across curricula.