Unity or split? Probing the politics of the body-voice relationship in contemporary mutlimedia opera
Abstract
It has recently been suggested that contemporary opera-or what has been termed "postopera"-reinvents a gap between voice and body that is inherent to opera in general (Novak 2015). However, such overemphasis on the gap, generally conceived, tends to obscure the persisting cultural investment in maintaining a perceived unity between voice and body, and it is also in danger of blotting out the distinction between the different effects and purposes such a gap may serve.
The objective of my paper is thus twofold. One, I revisit some classic film sound theory (Lastra, Doane, Silverman), and engage with recent theorizations of sound in the theatre, to point out what is at stake in maintaining the seeming unity of voice and body in opera within the multimedia context.
I concentrate, in particular, on how a (technologically reconstituted) unity between voice and body is used to produce an effect of "liveness" and presence in contemporary multimedia opera (such as Louis Andriessen's and Peter Greenaway's Writing to Vermeer, one of Novak's examples). And two, I propose a specific understanding of when and how a split between voice and body may be deemed critically productive in opera on both stage and screen and in between.