Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater. Nina Penner
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written about Schopenhauer’s influence on Wagner, particularly on Tristan und Isolde (1865), and on Wagner’s influence on Nietzsche’s early writings, such as The Birth of Tragedy (1872).10 There are also many studies that use philosophical theories to interpret a work or corpus, where the theory may not have influenced the production of the works under consideration. A recent example in this vein is J. P. E. Harper-Scott’s use of Alain Badiou’s concept of an event in Ideology in Britten’s Operas (2018).
Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater takes a different approach. I survey existing theories of narrative and performance that have been developed to describe other art forms (literature, cinema, spoken theater, instrumental music) and examine how well these theories describe opera and musical theater. When I encounter incongruities, I propose revisions to existing models or explore alternatives. This study, thus, involves two kinds of analysis employed in tandem. The first is the kind of analysis for which analytic philosophy is named: the analysis of concepts such as narrative, point of view, work, and performance. The second is the sort of analysis more familiar to music scholarship: the analysis of operas, musicals, and performances thereof.
The influence of analytic philosophy also extends to the book’s structure. As an argument-driven book, it will be most accessible if read in sequence. Arguments build from uncontroversial observations, developing complexity and nuance gradually through the consideration of counterexamples. My choice and use of examples mirrors philosophical or theoretical studies more closely than it does historical or hermeneutic ones by musicologists. Rather than focusing on a few closely related case studies, I illustrate my theory of operatic storytelling with illustrations from works from many different periods, styles, and genres. In most cases, I have included multiple shorter examples of a single phenomenon rather than one lengthier one, to make the book accessible to readers with diverse areas of interest and expertise.
The writing style has also been influenced by current work in analytic philosophy, which aims at clarity and precision without resorting to jargon. I have consciously avoided the pseudo-Greek neologisms and mysterious diagrams that plagued narratology of the 1970s and 1980s. Gregory Currie’s Narratives and Narrators (2010) demonstrated that something substantive could be said about narrative that is also a pleasure to read. This book is my attempt to offer something analogous about opera and musical theater that would be accessible to scholars and practitioners without backgrounds in narrative theory or philosophy.
As its title suggests, this study bridges another gap between two discourses that have, historically, had little to do with one another. The separation of opera and musical theater may be sensible in some domains, such as the economics and logistics of how performances are produced. Yet in terms of the materials that librettists, composers, and directors are working with, operas and musicals are broadly comparable. The main differences in medium stem from the different types of voices required to perform them. Since live performances of opera still proceed largely without the assistance of electronic amplification, singers require some degree of classical training to be heard over a full orchestra. By contrast, most roles in musicals are accessible to a wider range of vocal techniques and abilities.11 These differences in personnel often translate into differences in musical idiom, with operas drawing more heavily on European high art traditions and musicals being more closely aligned with the popular music of the period.12
Spoken dialogue plays a more important role in musical theater than it does in opera, but there are many exceptions. Singspiel (e.g., Die Zauberflöte [1791]) and opéra comique (e.g., Carmen [1875]) are genres of opera that contain spoken dialogue instead of recitative, and in the past few decades, an increasing number of musical-theater composers have opted for through-composed formats. Most rock operas (e.g., Rent [1996]) and megamusicals (e.g., Les Misérables [1980]) contain a minimum of spoken dialogue, as does the hip-hop sensation Hamilton (2015). Dance also plays a more important role in musicals than it does in operas, though Carmen (and, indeed, much French opera) provides an exception to this rule as well. In light of such exceptions, my initial attempts to define what separates operatic storytelling from other forms that involve singing (chap. 2) were unable to differentiate operas from musicals. Initially regarding this as a problem, I eventually decided to consider it as an opportunity to explore what might be gained from studying these art forms side by side.
In the performance-focused chapters, I discuss productions that I have seen live and those I have experienced only through video recordings. I also mention a few film adaptations of operas and musicals, works that were shot in a film studio or on location, without a live audience, typically with the actors lip-synching to a recording of themselves or their voice doubles. Although opera began as a medium for live performance, twenty-first-century enthusiasts are just as likely to engage with this art form in the cinema or on their televisions or computer screens. Concerns about the fundamental differences between the experience of live versus mediated forms of opera can be addressed through a sensitivity to the medium-specific features of these various ways of presenting and consuming sung drama.13 Furthermore, limiting myself to performances that I have seen live would have hindered my ability to place the productions I discuss in a performing tradition. Another advantage of recordings is the potential for repeat engagement, essential to detailed analysis. Discussing productions that are available on DVD or for online streaming also allows readers the ability to view these works themselves and thus to evaluate my assertions against their own experiences.
In the first wave of writings on music and narrative, there was a tendency to apply existing theories of narrative to music without considering the ways in which those theories have been shaped by the author’s target medium.14 For instance, the relative ubiquity of narrators in literary narratives led some scholars to doubt that works of theater, including operas and musicals, are properly understood as narratives. I dispel such doubts in chapter 1, which argues that narratives are utterances intentionally made to convey a story, whether through telling or through showing. In considering what a story is, I focus on the limit case of instrumental music.
Readers uninterested in whether the category of narrative includes Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony may wish to proceed directly to chapter 2, where I explore the medium-specific features of opera and musical theater through comparisons with other narrative art forms that involve singing, such as songs, oratorios, and cantatas. To differentiate sung drama from spoken plays and nonmusical films, I argue that singing is a normal mode of communication and expression in the fictional worlds of operas and musicals. In so doing, I argue against Abbate’s suggestion that if one entered the world of an opera, one would predominantly hear speech, not song.15
Although fictional narrators are not essential to narration, as I define it, some works of sung drama do have such narrators. Chapter 3 concerns the roles character-narrators play in operas and musicals, defining several common storytelling situations. Another important medium-specific feature of musical theater emerges from this discussion: Whereas novels often invite readers to imagine that there is a fictional source for the entire text we are reading, few works of sung drama support analogous imaginings. Even in operas that have character-narrators, such as The Turn of the Screw, one is not encouraged to regard those characters as being responsible for the orchestral music. Indeed, the orchestra often seems to know more than any character in the story.
For this reason, the orchestra’s role is often likened to that of a narrator. Despite the prevalence of these sorts of comparisons, the concept of the orchestral narrator has been subject to little theoretical investigation. How far should we take comparisons to literary narrators? Is it appropriate to imagine that the orchestra is responsible for presenting the opera to us, or is its role more akin to that of the chorus of ancient Greek tragedy, which merely comments on the action and guides the audience’s attention? Does the orchestra always function in a narrator-like capacity, or does it do so only at certain moments? Chapter 4 addresses these