Adaptation and twentieth-century opera

Abstract

Combining critical theory and dramaturgical analysis, this thesis considers twentieth-century English-language opera adaptations from a structural and cultural perspective, with particular focus on the increasing complexity of relationships between different types of literary text and the position of contemporary opera within national literary cultures. Employing the strategies of new musicology, particularly the examination of the ways the experience and interpretation of music is shaped by gender and sexuality, this argument forms a rebuttal of conventional opera analysis which frames theoretical consideration of the genre as primarily a negotiation of the comparative representative power of the libretto and the score. This thesis consists of three parts: the first develops a theoretical framework for the consideration of adaptation, combining analysis of adaptation theory, opera studies and a thematic reading of the prominence of psychological narratives in twentieth-century drama. The second part suggests a framework for narrative analysis of opera, beginning with a discussion of the thematic and structural expression of femininity in opera and the representative function played by the sung voice in narrative music, identifying non-naturalistic dramaturgical analogues to opera, and considering the aesthetic implications of extravagant stage artifice. The final part outlines the changing cultural position of opera in contemporary society through discussion of the position of the genre in relation to broader stage and literary culture in the United States and Australia, with particular focus on the impact of broadcast and recording technology on opera production, closing with a consideration of how the complex relationship between technology and live acoustic performance might come to shape the composition of new work. This thesis concludes with the contention that while the specific conventions and cultural status of opera make it an ideal media for atypical interpretations of canonical texts, the intricacy of the relationship between adapted operas and their source material is a reflection of the expansive creative and critical potential of all textual adaptations, rather than an exception based on the particular stylistic specifications of opera.