Description
Many directors leave the musical aspects of opera entirely to the singers and conductor. Sellars, however, immerses himself in the score, and has created a distinctive visual vocabulary to embody musical gesture on stage, drawing on the energies of the music as he shapes characters, ensemble interaction, and large-scale dramatic trajectories. As a leading scholar of gender and music, and the history of opera, Susan McClary is ideally positioned to illuminate Sellars's goal to address both the social tensions embodied in these operas as well as the spiritual dimensions of operatic performance. McClary considers Sellars's productions of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte; Handel's Theodora; Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise; John C. Adams's Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Nino, and Doctor Atomic; Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin, La Passion de Simone, and Only the Sound Remains; Purcell's The Indian Queen; and Bach's passions of Saint Matthew and Saint John. Approaching Sellars's theatrical strategies from a musicological perspective, McClary blends insights from theater, film, and literary scholarship to explore the work of one of the most brilliant living interpreters of opera.
About the Author
Susan McClary is Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University.
Book Information
ISBN 9780472131228
Author Susan McClary
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press
Weight(grams) 480g