LAURA
FEIJÓ
La forza del destino (Giuseppe Verdi), Oper Frankfurt season 2018/19
The Then Within the Now: Multimedia Performance and Syncopated Time in Verdi’s La forza del destino
By Laura Feijó
April 2020
In her book Performing Remains, Rebecca Schneider questions the common belief that a live performance “takes place in a ‘now’ understood as singular, immediate, and vanishing.” (1) To put such a premise into question is especially relevant when considering the advance of multimedia performance, which “aims to extend and enhance performance by exploring the full range of expressive media available.” (2) To think of multimedia performance is to think of different temporalities, for media and time are intrinsically connected. As argued by Maren Hartman et al.,
time itself has also been mediated for a long time…. Time is partly ‘just there’ in the sense of natural time..., but it becomes mediated in the sense that it is conveyed, communicated to others - or even, to begin with, invented. This process also allows it to be regulated and shaped. It gets told orally or in written form, it gets painted or photographed, it can get filmed. (3)
Therefore, one could argue that the use of media within a live performance has the ability to play with time, perhaps even more than a production that does not make use of such devices. In fact, multimedia performances have the potential, going back to Schneider’s terminology, “to trouble linear temporality — to suggest that time may be touched, crossed, visited or revisited, that time is transitive and flexible, that time may recur in time, that time is not one — never only one…” (4).
Recently, multiple productions by the Oper Frankfurt have embraced the use of technology in order to enhance storytelling. The production of Schostakowitsch’s Lady Macbeth von Mzensk in the season 2019/20, for instance, uses virtual reality to depict escapism and the emotional state of the characters. However, it is the production of Verdi’s La forza del destino which is able to truly connect media with the idea of multiple temporalities. Through the use of recorded video within the mise en scène, this reading of Verdi’s opera juxtaposes the live presence of the singers (in the present) with the digital presence of actors (recorded in the past), creating a direct comparison between the layers while highlighting their differences and similarities.
Interestingly, opera as an art form has itself a special relationship with the treatment and perception of time. Pieces are often extremely long, and the performance is constructed in such a way that, occasionally, time seems to be dilated or suspended. Arias are a good example of such moments, as explained by Pogue and Speck. During arias, no particular action occurs, and the narrative is not developed. On the contrary, a singer might take several minutes simply to explain his or her feelings. In such circumstances, “time stands still. An aria is just an instant of time, telescoped out to display all the emotional weight it contains.” (5)
As mentioned, this disturbance of linear temporality can become even more complex with the use of technologies on the stage. This essay seeks to explore such context, focusing on the hierarchical relations between the elements, the coexistence and interdependence of past and present, and the gestures created by both performers and the filmic material. In a nutshell, this essay poses the question: how does the use of recorded video within a live performance enable the spectator to rethink time? To achieve this, the study will firstly draw a parallel between Verdi’s original libretto and the version presented by Oper Frankfurt; then, it will analyze how the film is physically present in the mise en scène, which is key to understand the work’s influence over time; finally, the juxtaposition screen-stage will be addressed from two perspectives: the visual material of each layer and how performers move and behave.
It is important to emphasize that this essay will be analyzing specifically the production of La forza del destino during the season 2018/19, which premiered in Oper Frankfurt on January 27, 2019, under the direction of Tobias Kratzer. Furthermore, the focus lies in the scenes which portray a direct juxtaposition between film and stage, more precisely act I and the second scene of act IV. Besides, it is not the intention of this essay to engage in the broader debate of what is a live performance. Even though there seems to be no “clear-cut ontological distinctions between live forms and mediatized ones,” (6) as defended by Philip Auslander, the term live will be adopted here in order to differentiate the events unfolding on the stage from the ones being depicted on-screen.
On Verdi’s La forza del destino
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La forza del destino was first performed in 1862 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is considered to occupy a special position in Verdi’s oeuvre, often being described as an experimental project. “Both aesthetically and biographically, it constitutes a kind of shift between the dramatically concentrated, successful Italian operas of the 1850s, written in rapid succession, and his later, more extensive works.” (7)
The opera is presented in four acts. The original libretto (written by Francesco Maria Piave) sets the first act in Seville, Spain, at the end of the 1700s. When the Marquis of Calatrava sees his daughter Leonora with Don Alvaro, who is a person of colour, he forbids their relationship. Alvaro confronts him and a gun accidentally goes off, killing the Marquis. Alvaro and Leonora escape, ending up separated. The second act depicts Leonora’s fate. Dressed as a man, she arrives at an inn and sees her brother Don Carlo di Vargas, who seeks to avenge their father’s death. Leonora then goes to a monastery, where Padre Guardiano and other monks let her stay in the caves, isolated. The third act pictures Don Alvaro and Don Carlo, who have both enlisted in the army under false names. Not recognizing each other, they become good friends. However, Alvaro gets injured and Carlo discovers his true identity, challenging his former companion to a duel. The final act begins at the monastery, where Alvaro lives under the name of Padre Raffaele. He is finally found by Carlo, and they fight each other. Finally, they find Leonora. Carlo, who gets shot by Alvaro, is badly wounded but still manages to kill his sister before dying himself. Alvaro’s fate varies among productions. (8)
This main narrative is constantly paused by secondary characters, such as the gypsy Preziosilla, who exerts strong influence over the people around her. As the dramaturg Konrad Kuhn explains,
unlike all other Verdi operas, the main plot here is always interrupted by so-called genre scenes, where suddenly a huge choral tableau takes place. But this has almost nothing to do with the actual plot. There are several secondary characters, who have very important roles in the play, but who do not contribute at all to the plot. Like Preziosilla, for example, or Fra Melitone, which are episode characters, but on whom entire pictures are hung. (9)
While still respecting the original libretto, Oper Frankfurt made several adaptations in the use of space and time in Forza. Instead of placing the story in Spain, the director Tobias Kratzer decided to develop the play's storyline along several phases of the history of racism in the United States of America. In his words, “this begins in the golden age of slavery, continues through the American Civil War and various other intermediate phases up to the Obama years (...), up to the present situation.” (10) The intermediate phases mentioned by Kratzer include the second Ku Klux Klan era, around the time of the Second World War, and the Vietnam War in the 1970s. The final act, in which the confrontation between Don Carlo, Don Alvaro and Leonora takes place, is pictured in the present (2019), with the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality playing important roles.
Still, Kratzer did not want to fully abandon the original concept. The challenge was: how to portray racism in a credible and understandable way to the public, without reiterating the same racist mechanisms that the work condemns, i.e. the skin colour as a prerequisite to a certain role? The solution was found in the use of media within the mise en scène. On acts I and IV, there is an extremely large screen on the stage, in which a film is projected. This film, which was produced by Oper Frankfurt before the opera’s premiere, “duplicates” the scene seen in the theatre. That is, the audience sees the singers performing in the foreground and, behind them, actors reproducing the same gestures on-screen, but with deviations (see figures 01 and 02). However, before addressing the effects that this mediated mise en scène has over the narrative development and the perception of time, it is important to illustrate how exactly the film is present in that space.
Mediated Mise en Scène
Differently from the rest of the opera, acts I and IV have a very minimalist quality. The stage is composed of white walls and a white floor; the few pieces of furniture present are the ones necessary for the spectator to recognize the space as the same portrayed on-screen. The first act, for instance, takes place inside the Marquis of Calatrava’s house. The libretto describes the room as following:
A room covered in damask with family portraits and noble arms, decorated in the style of the eighteenth century, but in poor condition. In front, two windows… In the middle of the scene, quite to the left, there is a small table covered with damask carpet, and above it a guitar, vases of flowers, two silver candlesticks lit with lampshades, the only light that will lighten the room…. (11)
As figure 01 shows, the film attempts to reproduce the room precisely along these guidelines, resulting in a more “traditional” approach. As for the stage, it contains only a table and six chairs, positioned more or less in front of the furniture on-screen, leaving the rest of the space empty. The same process can be observed in the second scene of act IV, which (in Kratzer’s version) takes place in an apartment with blue walls, poorly decorated and disorganized. At the beginning of the scene, one can easily perceive the resemblance between the room in the film and the elements on the stage (a mattress and a white chair), consequence of a frontal camera angle (figure 02).
In both cases, as the film “invades” the space of the performance (12), it is the screen that sets the scene’s atmosphere and provides space orientation for the audience in the theatre. In fact, the film provides new information and details to the viewer and adds a new dimension to the stage by constructing “a location that now seems more real or imbued with more ‘depth’, then the theatrical setting of a theatre.” (13)
Figure 01: Mise en scène in La forza del destino during act I. Source: Oper Frankfurt.
Figure 02: Mise en scène in La forza del destino during the second scene of act IV. Source: Oper Frankfurt.
Filmic Gestures and Layers of Time
The previous description took into account how Kratzer placed a screen on the stage, constructing what John Cook calls “a new realm of techno-presence.” (14) It is now possible to address the screen’s dramaturgical function. Although there is no direct contact between both layers, in the sense that each performance is executed separately without the interference of the other, there is an inevitable direct comparison between them. This comparison is a result of two main factors: how actors and singers move and gesture; and their ethnicities. Let us start by analyzing the latter.
According to Kratzer, "we juxtapose the singers, cast according to voice quality and stage presence, with a film that shows the same scene typecast, as one might imagine when reading the libretto for the first time.” (15) In practice, the spectator is presented with two versions of the same characters. On the one hand, the film pictures a white Leonora and two African Americans, Don Alvaro and Curra (Leonora’s maid). On the other hand, the stage shows an African American Leonora (Michelle Bradley), while Curra (Nina Tarandek) and Don Alvaro (Hovhannes Ayvazyan) are light-skinned. Don Carlo and the Marquis are white in both cases.
Furthermore, singers and actors wear the exact same costumes, which intensifies their comparison and establishes a dialogue between screen, stage, and audience. Through this juxtaposition, the viewer is faced with the uncertainty of not knowing what one should believe and trust. (16) As a matter of fact, this doubt is reinforced by the very nature of each layer. From one perspective, Patrice Pavis argues that
in the competition between the filmic image and the ‘real’ body of the living actor, the spectator will not necessarily choose the living over the inanimate — in fact, quite the opposite! The eye is drawn by what is visible at the largest scale, that which never stops moving and holds the attention by way of constant shifts in shot and in scale.” (17)
Still, the screen in Forza remains silent. The actors do not talk in the film, they communicate only through their bodily movements and facial expressions. The singers are the ones who can verbally communicate to us, sharing their emotions and thoughts and therefore telling their version of the story; they are physically present in the same space as the audience; and they are supported by the orchestra, which alone can strongly influence the spectator. As argued by Paul Allain and Jen Harvie, “the performer’s presence strongly engages the audience’s attention and cultivates the audience’s own sense of presence.” (18) Thus, one could argue that there is no hierarchy between both layers — they coexist equally, and one is able to question their veracity to the same degree. This scenario could support the “assumption that live and filmed representations can be combined as complementary and equally compelling languages.” (19)
Interestingly, the fact that a previously recorded film is seen on the stage in a direct comparison to the live performance, makes the film somehow interactive and open to (perceptual) changes. In fact, Allain and Harvie state that a “[multimedia performance] questions our changing relationships to time and space by placing the ‘there and then’ of recorded performance within the ‘here and now’ of live performance.” (20) This idea can be connected to Schneider’s writings, though she goes one step further. As Schneider points out, film—as well as other media such as video, photography, and painting—can and should be considered a gesture. As such, not only is the film (past) located within the live performance (present), these parts actually engage in a conversation. And by doing so, they are able to put the notion of a linear, non-malleable time, into question. (21)
Gestures caught in or as documents such as film and video… are taken up by other bodies, things, or surfaces and passed along, body to body, as call meets response becomes call again. As such, gesture can be considered to both inaugurate and cross intervals that extend it across time and space. (22)
In the case of Kratzer’s production, there is a very clear message resonating from the juxtaposition of screen and stage. The film, representing both an historical past (act I) and a performance recorded in the past (both acts), “can be said to render an ongoing call…. In this sense, the past is an ongoing performance of reemergent actuality, full of performance’s potential....” (23) After all, it is the film that portrays the prejudice against people of colour in literal form. Its presence in the background forces the audience to reflect on its message and apply it to the present time, both in the theatre and outside it. Is the projection revealing, as suggested by Robert Edmond Jones, “simultaneously the two worlds of the Conscious and the Unconscious which together make up the world we live in—the outer world and the inner world, the objective world of actuality and the subjective world of motive” (24)? Is the past seen in the film really a past, or is it a part of the here and now as well?
Considering that the filmic gesture is passed from the screen bodies to the stage bodies and vice versa (and to the viewer), it is relevant to think of how the establishment of this dialogue is syncopated in the first place. From one perspective, it was the present who dictated what would be shot in the past, since the producers knew what kind of filmic material they needed to shoot in order for the opera to take place. At the same time, the past dictates how the singers behave in the present (as section 5 shows). From another perspective, following once again Schneider’s logic, when the film was shot, the present was absent, that is, the encounter between screen and stage was not yet there. And when the performance takes place in the present, the film actors are absent, existing only in digital form (not, yet there). Therefore, they are “both present and both absent at the time of the encounter.” (25)
Naturally, this dialogue only exists because of the role played by the audience in the opera house. “Though some may argue that the past itself does not change,” Schneider observes, “certainly attitudes toward and responses to it change.” (26) That is, if stage and screen existed without an audience being present, the layers would not engage in a call-and-response process, at least not as strongly. Both the performers (singers, musicians and actors) and the viewers “need the other to become significant.” (27) The spectators are the ones who connect all temporalities, including their own. In this context, another factor arises:
The thing that is fundamental about plays is that the scene as depicted on the stage is more often than not one might say it is almost always in syncopated time in relation to the emotion of anybody in the audience. [sic]
What this says is this.
Your sensation as one in the audience in relation to the play played before you your sensation I say your emotion concerning that play at which you are looking and to which you are listening. [sic]. So your emotion as a member of the audience is never going on at the same time as the action of the play. (28)
Gertrude Stein’s statement above highlights another “temporal layer” in Forza, the one concerning the audience’s emotional state—or simply, the audience’s presence in the theatre. For Stein, each viewer has a personal time, which will never be the same as the performer’s. In this case, one’s personal time should be in conflict with both the stage and the screen. In short, it is precisely the screen-stage-audience triad which extracts the strongest meaning in this reading of Verdi’s opera, making the idea of a linear, non-syncopated time questionable.
Bodily Gestures and the Interplay Between Past and Present
As mentioned, the juxtaposition of screen and stage in La forza del destino generates a direct comparison between these performances. Nevertheless, more than a comparison of content (ethnicity of characters and construction of the mise en scène) there is also a comparison of how actors and singers behave. In other words, how the scenes are choreographed in each space and which gestures are conducted by the performers. Here, one can constantly observe differences between the layers, mainly those concerning the rhythm and the timing of their actions.
Before diving into such distinctions and the effect that they have over the perception of time, it is important to differentiate the term gesture used here from the one used in the previous session. Up to this point, the word gesture has been applied to refer to the filmic gesture, that is, the use of recorded film as an attempt to engage in a dialogue (with the present) and, by doing so, as a tool to record, represent, carry, and even question history (and historical time). (29) Now, the term gesture will refer to what Imogene Newland calls the gestural material, “a series or sequence of body movements that may be broken down into distinct parts that may be known as motifs.” (30) Considering that the term gesture is open to many interpretations and definitions, this session will be adopting in a sense a more “traditional” approach, following Adam Kendon’s definition:
What is normally called ‘gesture‘ are those movements that partake of these features of manifest deliberate expressiveness to an obvious degree. Movements that have these characteristics are treated as if they are performed by the actor under the guidance of an openly acknowledged communicative intent and the actor will be regarded as being fully responsible for them. (31)
In Forza, the gestural material is easily recognizable, both on-screen and on the stage. The bodily movements executed by the singers are almost constantly the same as the ones executed by the actors, except for key moments, which will be explored shortly. Nevertheless, there is almost always a delay between the two versions, a natural consequence of the variability born from the live performance. Figure 01 illustrates well such deviations: the three characters on the stage are undoubtedly positioned mirroring the ones on-screen. Curra, behind the table, is facing the couple; Leonora and Don Alvaro are in the foreground, the former in front of the latter, both facing stage right. Yet the tenor is already touching the soprano’s arm, while the actor in the film is still beginning his gesture towards Leonora. (32)
Consequently, the spectator gets to experience each gesture twice — sometimes with seconds between each occurrence, sometimes only fractions of a second. In the example described above, the stage is slightly ahead of the projection, but this is not always the case. (33) These divergences are once again connected to the way time is perceived and handled in the piece. For Kristóf Nyíri, “gestures are, obviously, movements, and the meanings conveyed by them are created visibly in time. Gestures necessarily create the experience of before and after, as well as the experience of time consisting of extended intervals.”(34) In this context, let us briefly consider the differentiation of digital and analogue clocks made by Paddy Scannell. The author writes that
the digital clock tells me the exact time now: 9.11, 9.12, 9.13, 9.14… an infinitely recurring sequence of now points. In this method of numbering time there is always only and ever the immediate punctual now. The analogue clock displays the time now in terms of a before and after. Now it is ten to (before and towards) nine; now it is ten past (and after) nine. (35)
Similarly, when faced with the juxtaposition of screen and stage in Forza, the audience no longer experiences the gesture as an event happening in a punctual now, but instead perceives it to happen in a time frame before or after. Don Alvaro does not simply touch Leonora’s arm—he touches it before the Don Alvaro on-screen does.
Therefore, the double performance of each gesture makes past and present visible. However, time is not necessarily linear—there is an “endless interplay between past and present” (36). When a gesture happens firstly on the stage, it is actually performed before the gesture in the film, which already happened in the “past” (since the film was recorded before the live performance took place). Thus, the present becomes the past, by acquiring the status of original gesture. Another way of interpreting this situation would be that the “present” (the stage) remains the present, while the “past” (the film) becomes the “future”—after all, the spectator expects to see that same gesture again. In short, “the so-called past and the so-called future meet and greet at the site of reiteration.” (37)
*
As mentioned before, there are also moments in Forza when stage and screen deliberately do not match, mostly during act IV. For instance, the moment Leonora is killed by Don Carlo (38) (figure 03), all characters in the film move to the off-screen space and, for a brief moment, nothing happens on-screen. Because of this conscious interruption of the mirroring juxtaposition, the spectator’s attention naturally shifts to the singers. (39) Then, the opposite process takes place: while tenor Don Alvaro suffers besides soprano Leonora, one gets the feeling that nothing is actually happening on the stage, and that the actions in the film are more important at the moment.
From this point on, screen events and stage events unfold at a drastically different pace and there is no longer the will to match both layers visually. The filmic language changes dramatically in this final scene, with the use of hand-held camera, point of view shots, close-ups, and shorter takes. As for the narrative development, the film pictures two policemen entering the room, shooting Alvaro, looking around and seeing the bodies of Leonora and Carlo, and finally
approaching the bed where (African American) Alvaro lies lifeless (40). Meanwhile, the light-skinned Alvaro on the stage still sits next to Leonora, creating a conscious, strong opposition between both images (figure 04).
This rupture of the direct juxtaposition generates a disjointed time between the live and the recorded. Time now acts upon each subject differently, letting one version of the same character live longer than the other. Actually, because the spectator does not know if the tenor will die or not (in some versions of Verdi’s opera Don Alvaro survives at the end) (41), “there is also that feeling that you can turn the course of history because the event is unfolding now.” (42) Thus, at this point, the scene produces a double effect: firstly, it portrays Don Alvaro’s destiny differently according to his skin tone; secondly, it creates the possibility of a new ending—that is, of alternative futures (43). In such circumstances, one could say that “the trick and the abject horror of time is its covert use in the reinforcement of difference (i.e., race, gender,
sexuality). On a very basic level the manifestation of such difference is understood within the context of how time is applied and to whom.” (44)
This message gets even louder as the scene evolves. Suddenly, the projection is turned into a broadcast; a television or streaming which depicts the Black Lives Matter movement (figure 05). Here, there is a clear shift in the function of the screen: it no longer serves as a mirror of the stage; rather, it stands as an independent performance by itself. It is precisely against this background that tenor Don Alvaro is shot by two policemen (interpreted by the singers who had the roles of Fra Melitone and Padre Guardiano). (45) This incident could be an interesting illustration of Schneider’s argument that “it is in the past that our futures can be found…” (46), implying that it is the character’s fate to be killed, in the past and in the present; in recorded form and in “flesh and blood”. Finally, the images function as a cohesive closure to the dialogue constructed throughout the piece (which began “in the 18th century” and ended “in the present day”), as “we acknowledge that the ‘now’ of violence against people of color is also not only now, but drags a co-present history of significant duration…” (47)
Conclusion
Intermediality is linked to the capacity of the spectator to perceive each medium differently, and to accept receipt of several more or less mixed messages.
— Patrice Pavis
Multimedia performances have the ability to trouble linear temporalities in numerous ways. Through the insertion of a screen within the mise en scène, Tobias Kratzer’s reading of Verdi’s opera La forza del destino creates a direct comparison between a digital performance, recorded in the past, and a stage performance, happening in the present. Such comparison is reinforced by the elements of the mise en scène, the casting choices in each layer (contrasting the ethnicities of the performers), and their bodily movements.
By uniting the “there and then” and the “here and how” and giving both layers equally powerful voices, the piece is able to actually put linear time into question. It is true that “the here and now… is always already infected by the there and then.” (48) Still, the opposite is accurate as well: because of the juxtaposition, the there and then is always infected by the here and now. Moreover, the notion of the present as a punctual now is substituted by an interval constituted of before and after, in which the past does not necessarily come first. In a work which deals with racism and destiny, it is also interesting to see how the use of media creates divergences among the characters’ fate. For instance, when compared to the projection, the light-skinned Don Alvaro is given more time in life and, for a few moments, the possibility of an alternative future. As argued by Vilém Flusser, “in the filmic gesture, history is made from above and beyond itself. It is therefore not ‘things done’ but ‘things in progress.’” (49)
There are a couple of points that remained unexplored by this essay, the major one being the changes in the libretto made by Kratzer. To which extent is it excusable for a production to adapt the original work, completely changing the plot’s space and time in order to communicate a message which was not thought of by the composer? Future studies could also examine more deeply how black temporalities are present in this opera, taking into consideration both this version and the classical reading of the libretto.
At this point, it is perhaps necessary to spend a few words on the concept of liveness, which was deliberately avoided during this essay. In Hartman’s words, “one could claim that liveness’ quality lies in its emphasis on just this moment, the now of its experience (not necessarily, as we have seen, of its production).” (50) This argument seems to fit the case of Forza perfectly: although the film itself cannot (or should not) be considered live in terms of its production, its presence on the stage opens this possibility. The film alone does not contain attributes that compose the idea of liveness (such as the co-presence and/or temporal simultaneity of performer and audience, the risk of not being able to guarantee the outcome, or the chance to be impacted by the audience’s reactions). (51) Nevertheless, the screen acquires the status of live by engaging in this mirroring juxtaposition with the stage. The film may not be performed in real time, but its outcomes are produced through its presence within the mise en scène, through the live encounter (52) on the stage, and consequently vary every time. In short, the performance on the stage influences the digital performance (and vice versa), which becomes authentic and malleable. Nevertheless, this topic deserves a critical reading all by itself, taking into account the arguments defended by Peggy Phelan and Philip Auslander (each representing a broader group of scholars).
In conclusion, one could say that the production of La forza del destino as a multimedia performance added a new dimension to the original piece. The film is not only able to recount something that has happened or what could have happened—it actually causes “what might have happened to happen now.” (53) On acts I and IV, the spectator is faced with the possibility that the time as we know might actually not be untouchable; that the past might still live; and that it might be influenced by the present. In short, what the screen and the stage depict might, in fact, allow us to rethink time as we know it.
Notes
1 Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London, New York: Routledge, 2011), 87.
2 Paul Allain and Jen Harvie, The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), 174.
3 Maren Hartmann et al. “Mediated Time,” in Mediated Time: Perspectives on Time in a Digital Age, eds. Maren Hartmann et. al. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1-21, quote on 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24950-2.
4 Schneider, Performing Remains, 30, my emphasis.
5 David Pogue and Scott Speck, Opera for Dummies, foreword by Roger Pines (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1997), 305. 2008), 7.
6 Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd. ed. (London, New York: Routledge, 2
7 “Sowohl ästhetisch als auch biografisch bildet sie eine Art Schaltstelle zwischen den in schneller Folge entstandenen, dramatisch konzentrierten italienischen Erfolgsopern der 1850er Jahre und seinen späteren, umfassenderen Werken.” Gundula Kreuzer, “Die Macht des Experiments: La forza del destino als »Oper der Absichten«,” in Giuseppe Verdi: La Forza del Destino, ed. Bernd Loebe, Programmheft der Oper Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Druckerei Imbescheidt, 2019), 72-77, quote on 72, my translation.
8 Pogue and Speck, Opera for Dummies, 226-227.
Bernd Loebe, ed., Giuseppe Verdi: La forza del destino, Programmheft der Oper Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Druckerei Imbescheidt, 2019), 78-79.
9 “Anders als bei allen anderen Verdi-Opern, ist hier quasi die Haupthandlung immer unterbrochen von sogenannten Genreszenen, wo plötzlich ein riesiges Chortableau passiert. Was aber mit der eigentlichen Handlung fast nichts mehr zu tun hat. Es gibt diverse Nebenfiguren, die ganz wichtige Rollen sind, in dem Stück, die aber zur Handlung überhaupt nichts beitragen. Wie zum Beispiel Preziosilla, oder auch der Fra Melitone, das sind also Episodenfiguren, an denen aber dann ganze Bilder aufgehängt sind.” Konrad Kuhn (dramaturg) in discussion with the author, Oper Frankfurt, February, 20, 2020, my translation.
10 “Das beginnt in der Hochphase der Sklaverei, geht über den amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg und verschiedene weitere Zwischenetappen bis hin zu den Obama-Jahren… bis zur heutigen Situation, dem Rollback, der mit der Präsidentschaft Donald Trumps verbunden ist” Loebe, La forza del destino, 6, my translation.
11 “Una sala tappezzata di damasco con ritratti di famiglia ed arme gentilizie, addobbata nello stile del secolo XVIII, però in cattivo stato. Di fronte, due finestre… A mezza scena, alquanto a sinistra, è un tavolino coperto da tappeto di damasco, e sopra il medesimo una chitarra, vasi di fiori, due candelabri d'argento accesi con paralumi, sola luce che schiarirà la sala….” Verdi 200, “La forza del destino,” accessed February 28, 2020, http://www.giuseppeverdi.it/en/works/libretti/la-forza-del-destino/#Atto1Scena1, my translation.
12 Patrice Pavis, Contemporary Mise En Scène: Staging Theatre Today, translated by Joel Anderson (London, New York: Routledge, 2013), 132.
13 John Cook, “Transformed Landscapes: The Choreographic Displacement of Location and Locomotion in Film,” in Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, eds. Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 31-42, quote on 31.
14 Cook, “Transformed Landscapes,” in Broadhurst and Machon, 31.
15 “Wir stellen die Sänger, so wie sie, nach Stimmqualität und Bühnenpräsenz, besetzt sind, einem Film gegenüber, der dieselbe Szene so type-gecastet zeigt, wie man sich das vielleicht bei der Erstlektüre des Librettos vorstellen würde.” Loebe, La forza del destino, 7, my translation.
16 Loebe, La forza del destino, 7.
17 Pavis, Contemporary Mise En Scène, 134.
18 Allain and Harvie, Theatre and Performance, 193.
19 Auslander, Liveness, 40. Auslander does not seem to support this assumption himself, but acknowledges its existence.
20 Allain and Harvie, Theatre and Performance, 174, my emphasis.
21 Rebecca Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future: Gesture in the Times of Hands Up,” Theatre Journal 70, no. 3 (September 2018): 285-306, quote on 286, 287, 297. doi:10.1353/tj.2018.0056.
22 Ibid., 299, my emphasis.
23 Ibid., 300.
24 Robert Edmond Jones, The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of the Theatre (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 2. A similar idea is also defended by Blossom, who writes that to combine stage and film is to combine the conscious (present experience) with the unconscious (recorded). Roberts Blossom, “On Filmstage,” TDR: The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 11, no. 1 (Autumn, 1966): 68-73, quote on 70.
25 Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future,” 294, my emphasis.
26 Ibid., 300.
27 Jonah Westerman, “The Place of Performance: A Critical Historiography on the Topos of Time,” in Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance, eds. Matthew Reason and Anja Mølle Lindelof (London, New York: Routledge, 2017), 188-200, quote on 191.
28 Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America, introduction by Wendy Steiner (Boston: Beacon Press, 1935), 93.
29 Vilém Flusser, Gestures, translated by Nancy Ann Rot (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 87, 88.
Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future,” 286, 287, 299.
30 Imogene Newland, “Embodied Traces: Co-presence, Kinaesthesia and Bodily Inscription,” in Reason and Lindelof, 117-123, quote on 117.
31 Adam Kendon, “Visible Action as Gesture,” in Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7–16, quote on 14, my emphasis.
32 Oper Frankfurt, “Giuseppe Verdi: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO, Oper Frankfurt,” YouTube video, published January 30, 2019, accessed February 29, 2020, 2:03 - 2:13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZGuRvy7b-w&feature=emb_title.
33 Ibid., 2:37 - 2:49.
34 Kristóf Nyíri and Maren Hartmann, “It Began with an Interview… and Ended with a Text,” in Hartmann et al., 113-126, quote on 117, emphasis in original.
35 Paddy Scannell, “Time, Being, and Media,” in Hartmann et. al., 341-357, quote on 343, emphasis in original.
36 Paddy Scannell, “Time, Being, and Media,” in Hartmann et. al., 353.
37 Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future,” 286.
38 Oper Frankfurt, “Giuseppe Verdi: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO”, 0:39 - 0:52.
39 Konrad Kuhn (dramaturg) in discussion with the author, Oper Frankfurt, February, 20, 2020.
40 Oper Frankfurt, “Giuseppe Verdi: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO”, 3:04 - 3:26.
41 Pogue and Speck, Opera for Dummies, 226.
42 Philip Auslander, Karin van Es, and Maren Hartmann, “A Dialogue About Liveness,” in Hartmann et. al., 275-296, quote on 293.
43 Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future,” 294.
44 Damien M. Sojoyner, “Dissonance in Time: (Un)Making and (Re)Mapping of Blackness,” in Futures of Black Radicalism, eds. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (London, New York: Verso, 2017), 59–71, quote on 61, emphasis in original.
45 Oper Frankfurt, “Giuseppe Verdi: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO”, 6:08 - 6:20.
46 Schneider, “That the Past May Yet Have Another Future,” 286.
47 Ibid., 301.
48 Matthew Reason and Anja Mølle Lindelof, “Introduction: Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance,” in Reason and Lindelof, 1-16, quote on 4.
49 Flusser, Gestures, 89, my emphasis.
50 Auslander, van Es, and Hartmann, “A Dialogue About Liveness,” in Hartmann et. al., 291.
51 Martin Barker, “Coming a(live): A Prolegomenon to any Future Research on ‘Liveness’,” in Reason and Lindelof, 21-33, quote on 22.
52 Schneider, Performing Remains, 109.
53 Flusser, Gestures, 89, emphasis in original.