Operatic Afterlives
In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera’s founding myth — the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus’s attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Traditionally, opera kills its protagonists that best embody its ideal of the singing voice, but Grover-Friedlander argues that opera at times also represents the ways that the voice, singing, or song acquire their own forms of aliveness and indestructibility. Operatic Afterlives shows the ultimate power that opera grants to singing: the reversal of death.

Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals — from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi to Rocca’s Il dibuk, from Seter’s Tikkun Hatsot to Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost, from Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever to Disney’s The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met — are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the works in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the character’s death. This may arise from the multiplication of singing voices inhabiting the same body, from disembodied singing, from the merging of singing voices, from the disconnection of voice and character.

The instances developed in the book take on added significance as they describe a reconfiguration of operatic singing itself. Singing reigns over text, musical language, and dramatic characterization. The notion of the afterlife of singing reveals the singularity of the voice in opera, and how much it differs categorically from any other elaboration of the voice. Grover-Friedlander’s examples reflect on the meanings of the operatic voice as well as on our sense of its resonating, unending, and haunting presence.

1100564832
Operatic Afterlives
In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera’s founding myth — the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus’s attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Traditionally, opera kills its protagonists that best embody its ideal of the singing voice, but Grover-Friedlander argues that opera at times also represents the ways that the voice, singing, or song acquire their own forms of aliveness and indestructibility. Operatic Afterlives shows the ultimate power that opera grants to singing: the reversal of death.

Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals — from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi to Rocca’s Il dibuk, from Seter’s Tikkun Hatsot to Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost, from Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever to Disney’s The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met — are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the works in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the character’s death. This may arise from the multiplication of singing voices inhabiting the same body, from disembodied singing, from the merging of singing voices, from the disconnection of voice and character.

The instances developed in the book take on added significance as they describe a reconfiguration of operatic singing itself. Singing reigns over text, musical language, and dramatic characterization. The notion of the afterlife of singing reveals the singularity of the voice in opera, and how much it differs categorically from any other elaboration of the voice. Grover-Friedlander’s examples reflect on the meanings of the operatic voice as well as on our sense of its resonating, unending, and haunting presence.

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Operatic Afterlives

Operatic Afterlives

by Michal Grover-Friedlander
Operatic Afterlives

Operatic Afterlives

by Michal Grover-Friedlander

Hardcover

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Overview

In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera’s founding myth — the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus’s attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Traditionally, opera kills its protagonists that best embody its ideal of the singing voice, but Grover-Friedlander argues that opera at times also represents the ways that the voice, singing, or song acquire their own forms of aliveness and indestructibility. Operatic Afterlives shows the ultimate power that opera grants to singing: the reversal of death.

Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals — from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi to Rocca’s Il dibuk, from Seter’s Tikkun Hatsot to Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost, from Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever to Disney’s The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met — are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the works in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the character’s death. This may arise from the multiplication of singing voices inhabiting the same body, from disembodied singing, from the merging of singing voices, from the disconnection of voice and character.

The instances developed in the book take on added significance as they describe a reconfiguration of operatic singing itself. Singing reigns over text, musical language, and dramatic characterization. The notion of the afterlife of singing reveals the singularity of the voice in opera, and how much it differs categorically from any other elaboration of the voice. Grover-Friedlander’s examples reflect on the meanings of the operatic voice as well as on our sense of its resonating, unending, and haunting presence.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781935408062
Publisher: Zone Books
Publication date: 03/25/2011
Series: Zone Books
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Michal Grover-Friedlander is Professor of Musicology at Tel Aviv University and the author of Vocal Apparitions: The Attraction of Cinema to Opera.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction 13

Singing

Death Song

Afterlife: A New Configuration of Singing

Embodiment

Temporality

Aesthetic Orbit

Inside the Book

Prologue Traces

Giacomo Puccini, Le villi (1884) 35

Death, Afterdeath

Substitute

Dance Detour

Voice Recognition

Returned Singing

I The Afterlife of Maria Callas's Voice Franco Zeffirelli, Callas Forever (2002) 45

Bygone Voices

Regaining the Lost Voice: First Attempt

Re-voicing

Vocal Pairs: An Overwhelmed Body

Body-in-Voice

Regaining the Lost Voice: Second Attempt

Tosca

Unsightly. Unheardly

The Voice's Afterlife

II Sung By Death Giacomo Puccini, Gianni Schicchi (1918) 77

Better End

How Comedy Ends

Clues about Life and Death

Clue 1 Dramatic and Musical Continuity

Clue 2 Curious Dating of the Tale in the Libretto

Clue 3 Inaccurate Historical References in the Libretto

Clue 4 Symmetrical Impersonation

Clue 5 Undifferentiating the Living from the Dead

Shades

Morphing Music

3-2-1 Schicchi

Interlude Opera Ghosting

Michael Ching, Buoso's Ghost: Comic Sequel in One Act after Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (1996) 109

III Dybbuk: Between Voice and Song Lodovico Rocca, Il dibuk (1934) 115

A Soul Has a Voice

The Divine's Voice

The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds

Duet within Oneself with the Dead about the Unborn

I Am Song

Interlude Voice Replacement Puccini, Gianni Schicchi, Rocca, Il dibuk 149

IV Singing and Disappearing Angels Mordecai Seter, Tikkun Hatsot (Midnight Vigil, 1961) 151

Silent Singing

Dying Singing

Vertical Echoing

Crowning

Lamenting

Dying Out of Song: Midnight Vigil

Allowing a Voice to be Heard

Mystic Sounds

Composing A Hearing

Vocal Ideas

Pargod: Celestial Veil

Singing Evanescence

Coming to an End

Interpretation 1 "Real" Prayer

Interpretation 2 "Real" Tikkun

Interpretation 3 "Unreal" Prayer

Interpretation 4 Failure

Interpretation 5 No Redemption

Interpretation 6 Our Death

Interpretation 7 Silence

Epilogue Cartoon-Animated Opera The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met (Disney, 1946) 197

Notes 207

Index 247

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a most remarkable book, both serious and adventurous in its continuous exercise of musicianship, its critical literary intelligence, and its range of concern … . Operatic Afterlives is a detailed yet philosophical portrait of human responsiveness, of what it means to possess human expressiveness, in a word of what it is to be human. The work of a beautifully trained musician, this book invites readers to deepen their understanding of the human voice. Anyone seriously interested in the amazing realm of opera will not want, nay will not dare, to ignore this invitation.”— Stanley Cavell, Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Harvard University

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