Music Theatre

As a result of recent publications in the field of music theatre there has been a resurgence of interest in this highly misunderstood art form. This paper discusses the methodology and results from an online survey which investigated emotional responses to orchestration1 and instrumental aesthetics in contemporary music theatre. This report summarises the current literature, demonstrates gaps in the field, and suggests how further research may benefit the development of new music theatre. The research tests the hypothesis that music theatre is accidentally alienating to non-familiar audiences because of its complex musical language and perceived associations with opera and the ever-popular Broadway/West End musical. Since the 1960s, music theatre has been used to express artistic experimentalism in music performance. This paper aims to elucidate the connections between the instrumental and orchestration choices made by music theatre composers and the effects they have on a modern audience to identify key indexes which may indicate the art form’s failure to capture audience imaginations or to engage audiences emotionally. This research indicates that audiences generally have a good perception of instrumentation in music theatre. There is also evidence to support the hypothesis that there is a connection between lack of aesthetic appreciation (the admiration of beauty in art) and negative emotional response. However there remains a gap in our understanding of the abstract nature of music theatre, which some audience members struggle to comprehend or engage with emotionally.

In her close professional relationship to composers, such as Luciano Berio, John Cage, Hans Werner Henze, Igor Stravinsky and Sylvano Bussotti, Cathy Berberian has productively tainted historical preconceptions about the authorial “work” and the role of the singer in the realization of the composer’s creation. Her flamboyant character on the concert stage, where she showcased her more popular work, captured the public’s imagination. The success of this performer–audience rapport was intrinsic to the singer’s performative persona; however Pieter Verstraete argues that through her own composed work ("Stripsody" is the best known), Berberian presented a myriad of personas. She achieved this primarily by deconstructing her own voice as instrument and object, thereby subverting the stability of her relationship to the authorial power of the musical score. Consequently, Berberian’s work invites us to rethink the authorial position of the composer in relation to the singer/performer as well as the enhanced position of the listener whose function it is to imagine such personas in relation to seeing and hearing the performer’s singing body over a number of changing instances.

This co-edited, peer-reviewed volume seeks to blend documented history and academic scholarship surrounding the figure of Cathy Berberian with a double focus. On the one hand, this anthology aims to lay bare the legacy of Berberian as a woman performer-composer who had a remarkable vocal range and critical sense of vocality. On the other hand, it seeks to further a critical (and self-reflexive) thinking about contemporary vocality as developed within post-modern culture by such vocalists-composers as La Berberian who continues to inspire current and future vocal artists until this very day.

Der Aufsatz beleuchtet das Phänomen der Instrumentenzerstörung unter drei Aspekten: Destruktion wird erstens als Wendung gegen die Insignien bürgerlicher Kultur, zweitens als genuin theatraler Akt sowie drittens als Möglichkeit zur Schaffung von Artefakten oder Klangspuren betrachtet.

This research paper explores music theatre writing and research since its conception in the 1960s. It will explore what music theatre is or isn’t and will serve as a resource for me to draw upon whilst writing my own music theatre portfolio. I will be looking at different practices and practitioners such as Kagel and Cage as well as more contemporary practitioners and music theatre groups.

Please note the focus of this paper is toward MUSIC THEATRE as apposed to musicAL theatre.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/ryan-green/music-theatre-concepts-theories-and-practices/paperback/product-22097945.html

Immersive theatre is an exciting and dynamic art form which emerged as a popular new theatre practice in 1980s,  stemming from the combination of installation art, physical and visual theatre practices (Machon, 2013: xv).
The research for this dissertation is twofold. Secondary research is in the form of a comprehensive literature review which analyses previous writing and journals published on intermediality and immersive theatre. Primary research came from an online survey held from July to August of 2017 to discover the attitudes towards the art form. The results from these studies are discussed and summarised.
This dissertation questions how contemporary theatre companies create dynamic and stimulating performance works for today’s audiences. It aims to discover how many people attend performances such as those known as ‘immersive’ (to completely surround or fully involve an audience) or ‘site-specific’ (performance work created specifically for a space or place). It will address the issues of intermediality and immersive performance art and how soundscapes can be created to fully involve audiences in work which is relevant to the political and cultural climate of the twenty-first century. The dissertation will reference the work of Living Structures, Smoosh & Smoosh and Heiner Goebbels with a heavy emphasis on exploring the music used within selected pieces of work.
This dissertation will argue that there is significance for an immersive music theatre synthesis which is reflected through ticket sales and performances produced in Britain. It will reflect upon how music theatre art can become a catalyst for opening accessibility to work previously viewed as ‘high art’. The area of study spans the last two centuries. It finds that we are in danger of losing sight of seeing immersive theatre technique as ‘art’ but instead they are becoming fully sellable products which are more like attractions than reasons to tell a story. We may also have to rely on big name brands to help support our work as artists as immersive theatre may or may not be a popular form of theatre.
The main body of this dissertation is contained in chapter five where there is a discussion how intermediality is used within immersive theatre and to what extent. The chapter also discusses whether intermediality could be viewed as an aesthetic of immersive (music) theatre.

This document brings together three essays that I published on my blog the biting point in 2016, on the subject of music and theatre.

The first essay confronts the unstable and dissatisfactory category of 'music theatre', via a book review of Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi's The New Music Theatre (2008). Through the course of the next two essays, I then attempt to reconstruct a sturdier definition of music theatre, on the basis of newly posited definitions of 'music' and 'theatre', inspired by Richard Schechner and Alain Badiou. My listener-oriented definition of 'music' relies on a concept derived from theatre: becoming-music as a dramaturgy of sound. This means that both 'theatre' and 'music' are defined according to the same basic operation—presentation-as-world—yet, while the 'world' of theatre is always mimetic, the 'world' of music-qua-music is always exceptional to the 'real' world. Thus, the operation of theatre can be considered a solution to the impossibility of musical reality: music theatre is the 'presentation-as-world' of the musically possible.

The picture of 'music theatre' that emerges from this framework is a very broad one, which necessarily includes all live musical performance. In the third essay, I outline a theory of musical genre that differentiates between the various aesthetic criteria that arbitrate within this wide field, making different demands of different performances on the basis of different genres. At the heart of this theory is a notion, borrowed from Schechner and Victor Turner, of music theatre as ritual. The result is a quasi-anthropological survey of genre rituals (from pop and jazz, to opera and experimental music) as they relate to the 'worlds' of music and theatre, the modality of music's 'appearance' within the fictional world presented, and the 'aesth-ethic' criteria of success within each ritual performance.

A unique contribution to an emerging field, Composed Theatre explores musical strategies of organization as viable alternative means of creating theatrical work. In addition to insightful essays by a stellar group of international contributors, this volume also includes reports and interviews with important practitioners, shedding light on the historical and theoretical aspects of composed theatre and its processes.

Also available as paperback and ebook on all main platforms.

This multi-authored essay collects a range of position statements made by leading scholars/practitioners in the fields of theatre aurality, music theatre/opera, and sound design. Contributors independently prepared short statements in response to a central provocation—namely, the mooted ‘scenographic turn’ and its implication for theatre sound studies. The essay provides snapshots of current opinions about theatre sound design and scenography. It does not advance a single, unified argument but rather outlines some key ways in which sound/music and scenography are operating, and have operated, in theatre, and have been discussed in aesthetic theory. The essay ultimately reinforces the importance of attending to sound and scenography as co-constitutive elements, and suggests there is no single or best way of doing this.

The orchestra is often the most underappreciated element of a theatre company. This dissertation explores the role of the musician in both music theatre and musical theatre and aims to discover the extent of their expanding or contracting roles in both a commercial context, such as Broadway or the West-End, and non-commercial context, such as (off)-off-Broadway and off-West End. The timeframe of study is between 1969 and the present day. It will also highlight links to artists such as Marina Abramović. This dissertation asks if the role of the musician working within music theatre and musical theatre becomes one that is so extended that their job title is no longer appropriate. It outlines the musician’s historical role in theatre and their differing responsibilities in opera, music theatre and musical theatre. This dissertation also makes comparisons between musicians working in these two art forms.
Chapter One focuses upon the histories and theories of new music theatre and musical theatre, including Gesamtkunstwerk and the historic roots from opera. Chapter Two focuses upon music theatre as a hybrid, versatile art form that allows musicians to play a larger role in the creation and delivery of theatre performance, while Chapter Three documents how musical theatre performers responsibilities are moving away from the conventions traditionally found and the title of ‘actor’ or ‘musician’ are no longer appropriate as the job roles have expanded. The chapter looks at the how writing of performance includes set design and considers how this impacts on the audience’s experience of seeing a theatre work performed is changing and musicians and the orchestra are further disappearing making a performance cleaner and more ‘magical’.
This dissertation concludes that the role of the musician differs between the music driven theatres and that the future of musical theatre is unclear because there are few new younger writers and producers willing to invest both their reputation and finance into new performance art which does not fit a working commercial formula.

New music theatre has long been considered a mixed form that hovers between genres. Often, this liminality has been defined in terms of other musical and dramatic practices. Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi, for instance, invoke several existing musical types, explaining that "contemporary opera, music theater in its various forms, and the modern musical coexist on a continuum and the lines between them are often blurred" (Salzman and Desi 2008: 6).

Composers such as Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Harrison Birtwistle, although working independently of each other, have been prolific in creating experimental music theatre work, which often challenged the political landscape of their times. They set a precedent for the new synthesis of a new music theatre, which had not been recognised before as a new art form. This new kind of work would set a standard in theatre which effectively blended drama, music, properties and other theatrical elements found in ‘traditional’ theatre.
This paper explores the history of music theatre and the etymology of said phrase from Brecht in the 1940s up until the present day. It discusses where music theatre sits in realation to other music driven theatre and describes ways in which music theatre was created. Following this, this paper offers an in depth analysis of music for theatre work and introduces the theory that music theatre can be identified in a logical way using a five step model. The results of this test show that there is scope in creating a working model however it will need to be ratified and tested further in order to increase its validity. This paper concludes that although music theatre’s hay day was during the 60s and 70s, when institutions such as Dartington College of Arts had a major impact on the arts, it is still an emerging art form with room for growth.

Sound art has a long history but is an underappreciated art form which is often complex and challenging to the human ear. This paper explores the relationship between sound art and music theatre practices between the 1960s and the present day. It will offer a discourse between sound art performance and installation, with an exploration into the praxis of creating sound art with examples and case studies of works and practitioners. Through case-study methodology, this paper will take its references from performances and primary research technique. This paper explores the history of sound art and then applies theories to artists past and present.
Part One locates sound art in an artist context and provides history and theories. Part Two offers a deeper examination and discourse of sound art as music theatre. The paper finds that sound art which is located in a theatrical context often contains theatrical elements such as lighting, costume design, staging and song. This paper concludes that sound art and music theatre can be combined to create a new synthesis however, there is still leverage for a debate as to what could be used as an acceptable term for describing such a synthesis.

The landscape principle as a formative ideal has for long been observed by theories of art and its "disciplinary neighbours", painting, theatre, architecture, poetry, urbanism, cyber theories, primarily because the use of the landscape concept involves a notion of a place where different things coexist in specific relationships, but also because it involves an idea of a particular way of seeing or unseeing those things, articulating a certain view of the world's relations and logic. 1 Nevertheless, because its definition would always come through the visual, and, obviously, because it is about simultaneity, and music seems to be about succession, landscape as a term has not found a common use in the discussion on the formal principles in the sonic realm. 2 Regardless, Heiner Goebbels has frequently referred to landscape as a source of inspiration, even directly in several works. 3 Among these reflections, one in particular is often quoted as an object of fascination -the painting by Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake : The landscapes in Poussin's paintings already often lack a clear centre and looking at them demands respect to all the details. […] This grants the audience the freedom of perception [emphasis A. R.]; enabling us, authorizing the sight of the audience; and the fact that both these verbs are connected to the idea of power emphasizes the proposition. 4

w: Zwrot performatywany w estetyce, red. Lilianna Bieszczad, Wydawnictwo Libron, Kraków 2013, s. 183-194. Wśród elementów składających się na fonosferę widowiska dramatycznego wskazuje się zwykle trzy zasadnicze grupy dźwięków: głosy mówiące, muzykę oraz różnego rodzaju efekty akustyczne. Niezależnie od źródła ich emisji, które pozostać może widoczne bądź ukryte dla oczu widza, dźwięki te reprodukowane są na użytek widowiska -w zamierzeniu mają być zatem percypowane przez odbiorcę spektaklu. Jak zauważa Erika Fischer-Lichte, "co najmniej od XVIII wieku za dźwięki konstytuujące przestrzeń dźwiękową uznawano tylko te, które świadomie wytwarzali w przedstawieniach ich twórcy -aktorzy, muzycy i technicy" , nie uwzględniając, a wręcz zwalczając wszelkiego rodzaju odgłosy pochodzące z

Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.

This editorial introduces issue 11.2 of Studies in Musical Theatre, a special issue focusing on international development opportunities for new music theatre. The editorial responds to the appointment of composers Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris as artistic directors of the 2016 Munich Biennale, an appointment that allowed them to introduce a curatorial approach to developing new work for the musical stage. The special issue itself proceeds to consider some of the work created for the 2016 Munich Biennale, alongside discussions of other comparable processes that have generated new music theatre work in various arenas.

Most collections conceived in artistic domains, whether in dance, music or theatre, as they are performances and involve heterogeneous sources such as text, image, audio- video recordings, music, scenarios, gesture, movement, among others, are difficult to describe or document in archival contexts (e.g., music theatre). Archiving these works challenges musicologists, as it requires an in-depth knowledge of their collaborative practices, in addition to a study considering an archaeological musicology, being necessary to gather the pieces of the puzzle, since the different elements/materials of the works are dispersed by various sources. Post-custodial forms of archive present some solutions, however it would be important to seek for a common core language and combine archival standards in order to allow the interoperability of information to understand these works from a holistic perspective. In this paper, I seek to broaden discussions about the issues around preserving creations in the field of performing arts in the (digital) archive, giving specific examples in different artistic spheres.

In this book chapter, I attempt to survey London’s highly fragmented new music theatre landscape as it developed through the first two decades of the 21st century. I argue that, while the term ‘music theatre’ lacks a strong disciplinary orbit in the UK, equivalent trends have nevertheless emerged across a number of discrete disciplinary terrains (opera, contemporary theatre, new music, visual art, dance, cabaret, Live Art), in response to the same socio-economic factors of austerity and neoliberalism. Surveying each disciplinary context in turn, I outline the collapse of mid-scale opera production since the '90s, and the simultaneous rise of flexibility, transparency and immediacy as creative and aesthetic principles. The chapter draws on interviews with artists and producers associated with three key music theatre ‘nodes’—Tête à Tête Festival, Battersea Arts Centre and London Contemporary Music Festival—whose production practices and curatorial projects have helped determine the emergence of trends such as gig theatre, composer-performer collectives and gallery opera. Stressing the comparative centrality of pop music and Live Art to the UK’s music and theatre discourses, the survey concludes by highlighting the importance of a context-specific understanding of ‘music theatre’, which asks 'What do we mean by "music"?' and 'What do we mean by "theatre"?'.

Режиссерский музыкальный театр принято воспринимать как театр сложной концептуализации, провокационности, упрощенного и зачастую деэстетизированного визуального ряда и зрительского дискомфорта.
Противопоставлять ему принято театр, в котором режиссерский рисунок ненавязчив вплоть до полной незаметности. Одним из маркеров такого театра считается соответствие визуального ряда хронотопу либретто (или – для ранних опер – хронотопу их создания).
Однако появляется все больше и больше постановок, которые наполнены многоплановыми режиссерскими решениями, но при этом не нуждаются в том, чтобы ввергнуть зрителя в состояние дискомфорта или заставить его анализировать сложные построения (даже при наличии таких построений в структуре спектакля). Оформление таких спектаклей может иметь или не иметь отсылок к хронотопу, но, как правило, является насыщенным и эстетичным в массовом понимании, а в сценическом движении отсутствует статичность; при этом никакие решения не противоречат партитуре.
Можно считать, что перед нами режиссерский театр нового типа, причем такой театр подходит для любой неэлитистской аудитории.
В докладе данный тип театра исследуется на примерах постановок Эдриана Ноубла, Филиппа Штёльцля и Свена-Эрика Бехтольфа.

Im Umfeld jener Entwicklungen, die Hans-Thies Lehmann Ende der 1990er Jahre unter dem Stichwort des »postdramatischen Theaters« diskutiert hat, lässt sich im Musiktheater die Tendenz beobachten, den als Träger des Geschehens fungierenden Körper des Performers aus dem Arsenal theatraler Erfahrungsgegenstände zu entfernen. Im Rahmen der Ausführungen wird der Begriff der »Abwesenheit« im Anschluss an Gerald Siegmund zur Bezeichnung der Arbeit mit solchen Leerstellen eingesetzt. An drei auf unterschiedlichen Musiktheatertraditionen fußenden Beispielen aus dem Zeitraum von 1987 bis 2007 – »hm für zwei klavierSpieler, zwei percussionisten, einen beleuchter« von Hans-Joachim Hespos (1987), »Tragödia (Der unsichtbare Raum)« von Adriana Hölszky (1996–97) und »Stifters Dinge« von Heiner Goebbels (2007) – wird aufgezeigt, inwiefern der Bezug auf den Gedanken der Abwesenheit jeweils im Gefüge spezifischer wahrnehmungsästhetischer Überlegungen lokalisiert ist und auf eine den Kriterien der jeweiligen Personalstilistik untergeordnete Aktivierung des Rezipienten zielt.

The Po/ethics of Heiner Goebbels' Things
(Notes on the role of arts and politics today)

The paper discusses the work of Heiner Goebbels from a point of view of art as an ethical and political practice. It examines the political background of his artistic vision, how those views affect the ways how content, form and time are treated in his works, but also what are the goals and what are the means by which such a vision becomes an experience for the audience.
Key words: Heiner Goebbels. Music Theatre. Music and politics. Music and ethics.

This article examines the soundscapes of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Tambours Sur La Digue and explores the concept of acoustic mimesis located in the performance as a dramaturgical strategy to create, aurally, an imagined Far East. In Tambours, mimesis is the performative principle exemplified by the presentation of the mise en scène, and most distinctly Mnouckine’s decision to adapt the Japanese performance tradition of Bunraku through a process of 'reversed' mimicry (in which human bodies simulate the wooden marionettes of the Japanese style). Mimesis pervades the acoustemologies of the performance as it is heard in the extracted sounds, styles, and rhythms of Asian musical modes and movements that consequently become dislocated from context; the sounds become imitated, iconicised and exoticised as sonic signatures as they reify the Orientalist spectacle. The 'oriental' soundscape, reverberating with exotic overtones, becomes the means by which the production creates an imaginary Orient – one in which the Orient Other is silenced, and is resounded only through the musical sensibilities of the Occidental Self.

In this paper we present some technical aspects on the virtual masks created by the composer Georgia Spiropoulos for the needs of Les Bacchantes (IRCAM, 2010), a solo opera for one performer, tape and live electronics. In The Bacchæ the performer interprets four different characters within the interactive environment in Max/MSP. The “vocal masks” are seen as a metaphor of Euripides’ dramatic personae in which masks  of the same actor are used as virtual scores which register the vocal trace of the performer and give further vocal agility, extensibility, mutation, multiplication and augmented vocality.

This article encourages further discussion of certain concepts and practices for the music theatre creations by the composer Constança Capdeville (1937-92) in keeping with the time and context of her compositions. Her music theatre works incorporate by a certain hybridism as they juxtapose various artistic expressions such as dance, music, and theatre. Throughout the 1970s, the performance concept as understood today was not fully recognized, either by composers or by the performers, who collaborated with Capdeville within the context of the Portuguese music scene. In this regard, the composer António de Sousa Dias believes this stemmed from the tendency to connect the term with performance art or with certain positions linked to happenings or free improvization, which were not the main concern of Capdeville. Given the difficulty in classifying her musical works, we here discuss some etymological issues around the performance and re-performance concepts. Capdeville's music theatre works combine different artistic expressions leading us to reflect on documentation strategies including interdisciplinary approaches from fields such as (digital) philology, computer science, archiving research and performing arts documentation, detailing here some perspectives and practices currently applied for preserving such artistic productions.

An analysis and original translation by Dr Magda Romanska of Bogusław Schaeffer's play Dream and Not: Theatrical Play in the Form of Instrumental Concerto. In her analysis, Romanska elucidates Schaeffer's surreal play about a 'perfect' family imprisoned by its own rhetoric. Written by Schaeffer in 1998, Dream and Not is a play that follows the musical contours of a concerto; scenes are labelled by their Italian musical counterparts and the piece develops in three parts (acts). Romanska's translation, praised by Schaeffer himself, honours the nuance of the original while exposing Schaeffer's work to the English-speaking world.

Los debates estéticos y sus escritos en la España del XVIII se llevan a cabo en dos ámbitos. El de la estética culta y académica, por un lado, y el de la estética mundana, por otro. En la estética académica encontramos tratados y ensayos que hablan de teoría de la belleza, de la experiencia estética y teoría de las artes, pero también, y esto es un rasgo muy propio de la Ilustración, encontramos programas de estudios, propuestas de reformas y discursos institucionales que intentan mejorar la educación artística de los españoles reconociendo el valor formativo que tienen las artes. En el ámbito de la estética mundana, encontramos publicaciones periódicas, ensayos seriados y artículos de memoriales, gacetas y diarios que describen y evalúan las costumbres del pueblo, fundamentalmente ciñendo esa observación a la Villa y Corte de Madrid, ccupando también un lugar relevante en esta observación la ciudad de Cádiz, que, por su carácter portuario y el contacto con Europa e Iberoamérica, estaba mucho más abierta al exterior y al intercambio de ideas que otras en España. Y ¿qué es de la estética popular? La de la tradición oral, y por tanto, no fijada ni directamente documentable, pero sin duda, más viva. Nos proponemos rastrear esa tradición oral a través de las letras de algunas tonadillas escénicas, género de indudable éxito e impacto en su tiempo, en un intento de pulsar cuál sería el sentir del pueblo ante el teatro y el teatro musical, que al fin y al cabo era producto que de él emanaba y del cual él era receptor. Las controversias del debate En la época que nos ocupa, el segundo tramo en el trono de la familia Borbón (Carlos III y Carlos IV), el debate que se plantea es entre lo foráneo y lo auténticamente español, entre el italianismo y el casticismo musicales,

Jamaican heritage is rarely represented in contemporary British theatre, although the tropical climate has provided for a rich culture in performing arts at home. This paper aims to discover what music driven performance Jamaican artists have created and whether it is relative to our European forms of music theatre or musical theatre. The paper concludes that music theatre is an continued effective vehicle for delivering heavier subject matter but has not been fully explored as a vehicle for Jamaican story telling even though the open-ended characteristics of the genre could be an interesting area to explore, especially with the current social movements. This paper calls for more experimental music theatre work which celebrates Britain's developing cultural diversity.

This chapter discusses the use of microphones as 'interfaces' in contemporary music theatre. By means of compelling case studies, Verstraete unpacks the multi-medial usage of the microphone as instrument in theatre performances that constitute a digital 'Gesamtkunstwerk' on the stage, through sound and image. He discusses the implications of such aesthetic strategies and practices in sound design as acoustic feedback, motion tracking, the placing of voice (from vocal exercises), and interfacing the voice for the production of a 'total theatre of voice and sound' in the 21st century.

Οι ιδεολογικές και προγραμματικές παλινωδίες που χαρακτηρίζουν την πρόσφατη ιστορία του κρατικού μας λυρικού θεάτρου, της Εθνικής Λυρικής Σκηνής, δεν αποτελούν τυχαία γεγονότα, ούτε έχουν να κάνουν αποκλειστικά με τα πρόσωπα που εμπλέκονται στις διάφορες διοικητικές και καλλιτεχνικές θέσεις. Αντιθέτως, φανερώνουν ξεκάθαρα τη γενικότερη αμηχανία που χαρακτηρίζει την ελληνική κοινωνία σχετικά με τη φύση και τον πραγματικό κοινωνικό ρόλο του είδους της όπερας και των συγγενών της μορφών. Τι χρειάζεται, στ’ αλήθεια, η όπερα στη σύγχρονη Ελλάδα; Το ερώτημα, δυστυχώς, δεν απαντάται ούτε από το δεσπόζον ρεύμα της καθιερωμένης τρέχουσας κριτικής, που εστιάζει συνήθως στα προβλήματα και τις ελλείψεις της επικαιρότητας του λυρικού μας θεάτρου, χωρίς να εστιάζει στην οντολογία του ίδιου του είδους και την πραγματική σχέση του με τη νεοελληνική κοινή συνείδηση. Το κείμενο εντοπίζει ως βασικές αιτίες για την εν λόγω αμηχανία (α) την επικράτηση της ιδεολογίας του «γνώστη» ως κατεξοχήν φορέα και καταναλωτή του λυρικού θεάτρου και (β) τη συνακόλουθη αποπολιτικοποίηση του είδους. Ως, δε, πιθανή λύση προτείνει μια ριζική επαναπολιτικοποίηση της όπερας και της λυρικής φωνής και την επαναδιεκδίκησή τους ως ριζοσπαστικά εργαλεία για το εδώ και το τώρα. Το άρθρο κλείνει με μια σύντομη απαρίθμηση εξωθεσμικών λυρικών παραστάσεων με ερευνητική διάθεση που έλαβαν χώρα στην Αθήνα κατά την τελευταία δεκαετία.

Seit geraumer Zeit lässt sich in der Neue-Musik-Szene ein verstärktes Interesse an den Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten musiktheatraler Ausdrucksformen erkennen, dem auf musik- und theaterwissenschaftlicher Seite eine intensivierte theoretische Auseinandersetzung entspricht. Deren Manko liegt allerdings darin, dass ihr, ausgehend von experimentellen Musiktheaterformen des 20. Jahrhunderts, meist die Begrifflichkeit des ›Musiktheaters‹ zugrunde gelegt wird, um eine Abgrenzung zum Begriff ›Oper‹ zu schaffen, während eng an traditionelle Institutionen gebundene Arbeiten weitaus seltener gewürdigt werden. Genau mit diesem Repertoire befasst sich dieser Beitrag, der auf einem Vortrag basiert, der im November 2019 anlässlich eines Symposiums an der Deutschen Oper Berlin gehalten wurde: Anhand ausgewählter Projekte aus den zurückliegenden Jahren von Detlev Glanert, Moritz Eggert, Sarah Nemtsov, Evan Gardner und Olga Neuwirth werden unterschiedliche Strategien musiktheatralen Komponierens beleuchtet, die für die Veranstaltungsdispositive der Institutionen Oper und Konzertsaal geschaffen wurden. Die durch solche Fokussierung entstehende Kategorisierung erhebt keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit, sondern ist als Denkhilfe gedacht, um bestimmte Phänomene und Entscheidungen, den Kompositionsprozess, die jeweiligen ästhetischen Lösungen und die Situation der Aufführung betreffend, besser einschätzen und bewerten zu können. Sie lässt Schlüsse auf die ästhetische Innovationsbereitschaft von Komponist*innen im Angesicht institutionalisierter Spielorte zu, sagt aber zugleich auch etwas aus über die Erwartungen, die an das Publikum gerichtet werden. Insofern bietet sie eine Diskussionsgrundlage, vor deren Hintergrund sich bestimmte Entwicklungen der aktuellen Musiktheaterproduktion besser einschätzen lassen.

An increased interest in the conditions and possibilities of music-theatrical forms of expression has been discernible in the new music scene for some time now, which corresponds to an intensified theoretical discussion on the part of musicologists and theater scholars. However, the shortcoming of this is that, starting from experimental music theater forms of the 20th century, it is usually based on the concept of ›music theater‹ to create a demarcation from the concept of ›opera‹, while works closely tied to traditional institutions are much less often appreciated. It is precisely this repertoire that is the subject of this article, which is based on a lecture given at a symposium held at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in November 2019. Based on selected projects from the past years by Detlev Glanert, Moritz Eggert, Sarah Nemtsov, Evan Gardner, and Olga Neuwirth, it illuminates different strategies of music-theatrical composing created for the institutions of opera houses and concert hall. The categorization created by such a focus does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather is intended as a guideline in order to better assess and evaluate certain phenomena and decisions concerning the compositional process, the respective aesthetic solutions, and the situation of the performance. It allows conclusions to be drawn about composers’ willingness to innovate aesthetically in the face of institutionalized venues, but at the same time it also says something about the expectations that are directed at the audience. In this respect, it offers a basis for discussion against which certain developments in current music theater production can be better assessed.