Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body

Both in opera studies and in most operatic works, the singing body is taken for granted. In Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body, Jelena Novak reintroduces an awareness of the physicality of the singing body to opera studies. Arguing that the body-voice relationship itself is a producer of meaning, she furthermore posits this relationship as one of the major driving forces in recent opera. She takes as her focus six contemporary operas - La Belle et la BA*te (Philip Glass), Writing to Vermeer (Louis Andriessen, Peter Greenaway), Three Tales (Steve Reich, Beryl Korot), One (Michel van der Aa), Homeland (Laurie Anderson) and La Commedia (Louis Andriessen, Hal Hartley) - which she terms a "postoperasa (TM). These pieces are sites for creative exploration, where the boundaries of the opera world are stretched. Central to this is of the impact of new media, a de-synchronization between image and sound, or a redefinition of body-voice-gender relationships. Novak dissects the singing body as a set of rules, protocols, effects, strategies. That dissection shows how it acts within the world of opera, what interventions it makes, and how it constitutes operaa (TM)s meanings.