Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The chapter-length introduction situates the book’s subject matter within a broad interdisciplinary field, and specifically in relation to the theory of intermediality in theatre and performance, the burgeoning audiovisual studies, and the “material turn” in opera scholarship. Approaching opera as hypermedium draws attention to the continuity between operatic past and present, and between different media and art forms, old and new. Productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle by Robert Lepage and La Fura dels Baus serve here as a starting point for consideration of opera’s inherently hypermedial aspects. Pieces by Philip Glass, Michel van der Aa, and others help contextualize the book’s central case studies, the operas by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen and British filmmaker Peter Greenaway, which epitomize the ways these aspects are rethought today. To outline the book’s theoretical framework, the introduction revisits some classic nodes in the debates about presence and representation and about liveness and mediatization.