Yayoi Uno Everett focuses on four operas that helped shape the careers of the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun, which represent a unique encounter of music and production through what Everett calls "multimodal narrative." Aspects of production design, the mechanics of stagecraft, and their interaction with music and sung texts contribute significantly to the semiotics of operatic storytelling. Everett's study draws on Northrop Frye's theories of myth, Lacanian psychoanalysis via Slavoj Zizek, Linda and Michael Hutcheon's notion of production, and musical semiotics found in Robert Hatten's concept of troping in order to provide original interpretive models for conceptualizing new operatic narratives.

About the Author

Yayoi Uno Everett is Professor of Music at University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Music of Louis Andriessen.

Reviews

In the last 20 years, scholarly research on opera has encompassed cultural, media, gender, psychoanalytic, and literary theories. With this book, Everett makes an important, impressive contribution to that scholarship. . . . Highly recommended.

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[O]ne of the most satisfying aspects of Reconfiguring Myth is Everett's sensitive attention to the way different productions articulate an opera as historical drama, allegory, and myth; such case studies set a new standard in our understanding of contemporary opera as not only a multi-dimensional, but also a constantly changing theatrical experience.

* Music and Letters *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253017994
Author Yayoi Uno Everett
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 535g