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Opera in Performance: “Regietheater” and the
Performative Turn

 
clemens risi
€t erlangen-nürnberg
friedrich-alexander-universit a

The opera stage must challenge spectators in such a way that they are drawn to the
very edge of their seats, wide awake, and are each compelled to risk a private de-
bate with what they see and hear, with every aria, every fugue, and movement.1

This remark was made by opera director Hans Neuenfels to Der Spiegel in 1982
following the scandalous production of Aida in Frankfurt with which he laid the
foundation for what is now referred to as “Regietheater” in opera. It is the dia-
logue between stage and audience invoked in this remark that interests me: the
active relationship between performers and spectators/listeners, and what plays
out between the participants in a performance. And by participants, I mean the
musicians and singers as well as the listeners and spectators. In what follows, I
would like to present a few fundamental considerations from my research on
“opera in performance,” which has attempted to forge an interdisciplinary ap-
proach suitable for the analysis of opera stagings from the last fifteen to twenty
years.2 This approach draws to a large extent upon theater studies—and, more
specifically, upon performance theory—but is also complemented by elements
borrowed from musicology.3 My reflections are concerned primarily with those
opera stagings that could be described as “Regietheater,” or as what the Anglo-
American press refer to with evident pleasure as “Eurotrash”; that is to say, stag-
ings from (to give a few examples) Hans Neuenfels, Peter Konwitschny, Jossi
Wieler, Sergio Morabito, or Calixto Bieito. These are often stagings of so-called
repertory classics—works by Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, etc.—i.e., those operas that
form the core of what’s performed in our opera houses and which are presented
in ever-new interpretations. The question becomes: What aspect or aspects of
this phenomenon can be better described and formulated by means of an analy-
sis that focuses on the performative?
***

The Opera Quarterly Vol. 35, No. 1-2, pp. 7–19; doi: 10.1093/oq/kbz013
Advance Access publication September 25, 2019
# The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please email: [email protected]
8 | clemens risi

At present, opera performance praxis seems to be moving in three directions. First,

there is a tendency to deconstruct texts and recombine them, to produce new fric-

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tions through juxtaposition with material that in fact does not belong to the original
work. This tendency has been at work in the theater for quite some time, but also
has a tradition in the opera itself (one thinks of the pasticcio praxis of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, with its inserted arias, abbreviations, rearrangements,
etc.). Second, on the side of reception and production, one can observe something
that we might think we have overcome, namely a kind of dogged clinging to
demands for fidelity to the text and work (“Werktreue”). Finally, moving between
these two extremes, and particularly popular in Germany and other European coun-
tries, is the performance praxis frequently described as “Regietheater”—a term that
remains contentious.4 In the course of the several decades that this praxis has
existed, however, a number of characteristics have proven typical: as a rule, perform-
ances are announced as stagings of traditional works and function in particular
through the idea and practice of repertoire theater. That is to say, these are in general
well-known “works”—the works of the classical operatic canon5—that regulate the
question of authorship through the two poles of composer and director, while pro-
ducing a horizon of expectation located between recognition and surprise through
divergence. (New musical compositions and “rediscoveries” are generally not the fo-
cal point of this performance praxis.) The production of such stagings directs atten-
tion in particular to the relationship between auditory and visual elements, and to
the question of how the musical plane interacts with the scenic one. An attentive-
ness to the interplay of hearing and seeing holds especially for the singers: bodily ex-
istence is given the same significance as the voice, both on the side of the
production and in the audience’s perception. The ways in which the actual perfor-
mance diverges from what one expects from a canonical work often produces a con-
fusion about whether the staging one has seen can even be classified as an
interpretation of a well-known work, or if it is instead something entirely different.
It is precisely the intellectual engagement with new readings and interpretations
typical of “Regietheater”—that is to say, its emphasis on the semiotic potential of
stagings—that has drawn attention to the “other” side of the experience of opera
performances, the performative aspects of opera. This is the experience of moments
that cannot be described as the representation of something, but rather serve first
and foremost to trigger intense experiences or bodily reactions. These are moments
frequently characterized by confusion, intensity, and a rupture in understanding—
by the awareness of one’s own perception or of the passing of time.
The premieres of such “Regietheater” stagings are frequently (although not al-
ways) accompanied by vocal audience reactions, ranging from simultaneous ap-
proval and disapproval to protests, scandals, and outrage. Perhaps no other
theatrical form is capable of producing such intense reactions, either positively or
negatively. From fan groups’ declarations of love to enraged protests and uproar,
 opera in performance | 9

opera, in its current staging practices, seems to collect the most diverse and extreme
expressions of a performative interaction between stage and audience.

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***
Taking this initial diagnosis as my point of departure, I seek in my methodological
suggestions for new modes of description—of a different relationship between score
and performance, and of the performance situation itself, i.e., the relationship be-
tween performers and audience. I say that these are new because scholarship in op-
era and music theater has traditionally understood itself—and, in part, continues to
understand itself—as the history of composition, and thus takes as its point of de-
parture a musical analysis of a work grounded in the score. This approach has
tended to bracket the question of an adequate analytic account of the performative
dimension of music theater. Of course, there are tendencies within musicology that
one can point to as first steps in a new direction—e.g., in interpretation research6
and in recent opera scholarship.7 However, while many aspects of this research are
fruitful and productive, one can nevertheless observe a tendency to establish a hier-
archy between the score and the performance, or to assume one as a point of depar-
ture. The result is a hierarchy that takes the score as both start and end point for an
analysis of interpretations or performances. Instead, I would like to suggest a
change in focus. In the study of contemporary opera performances, I propose that
we treat the performance not as an interpretation of a score, but instead conceive of
the score as one of many materials used to produce a performance.
This change in focus allows us to bring into view all those elements of a perfor-
mance that are not to be found in the score, but are at least as significant for the way
a performance affects an audience and is perceived by them. Indeed, these elements
may be even more significant than the underlying musical material. What I have in
mind are concrete and individual voices ringing out, concrete and individual bodies
in motion, ever-new and ever-changing communications, dialogues between the
performers and the audience. This new perspective allows us to bring into view the
unique ways in which a performance distinguishes itself from texts and other arti-
facts, the way it stands out: namely, as something that exists only in the moment,
only in the time of its appearing, and only in the corporeal co-presence and interac-
tion of spectators and performers. It is this specific mode of appearance that I term
the particular performative dimension of opera.
Erika Fischer-Lichte’s theory of performance has proven particularly helpful as a
means for approaching this performative dimension of opera. Her theory empha-
sizes the process of dynamic interaction between performing agents and perceiving
audience.8 If one attempts to translate this performance theory—inspired by J. L.
Austin and Judith Butler, among others—into terms adequate to the conditions of
opera performances, then one can postulate the following: gestures and vocal
expressions do not only mean something, do not only refer to something that they
10 | clemens risi

are meant to say, and are not only the secondary expression of a prior form of the
work. Instead, they themselves create effects, initiate something, create a new reality

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in the moment in which they are carried out. One can also observe an opera perfor-
mance from this perspective: every action in the performance not only refers to a
previously noted state of affairs (captured in a libretto and/or score), but in fact itself
creates a new state of affairs. A gesture or vocal expression on stage does not always
signify the action of a prescribed dramatic role, but instead sometimes only refers to
itself as a completed action, as the gesture of a person on a stage. Especially promis-
ing for the study of opera performances is Butler’s concept of the processes of for-
malization and stylization for continually repeated performances (“stylized
repetition of acts”9)—in other words, the recognized repertoire of gestures and
speech acts used in the performance, associated with the continual thrill of recogni-
tion and digression.
In The Transformative Power of Performance, Fischer-Lichte differentiated four cat-
egories that together serve to constitute a performance: mediality, materiality, semio-
ticity, and aestheticity. The first two of these four categories are of particular
relevance for my work: mediality, which addresses the specific communication situ-
ation of a performance, i.e., the interaction of all participants in bodily co-presence,
and with a high degree of contingency; and materiality, an awareness of the sensual
but non-semiotic elements of the performance, and thus of the play of presence and
representation. What is meant by the plane of signification or representation is the
function of the various elements of an opera performance with respect to a clear
meaning, a fictional world and narrative. What is meant by non-symbolic character
or presence is the dimension of “non-understanding” (to borrow a concept from
Hans-Thies Lehmann10), or the “non-hermeneutic” (as Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
would say11), or “drastic knowledge” (Carolyn Abbate12). This is the sensory, one’s
own body, the erotics of the voice, etc. The oscillation occurs between bodies’ and
voices’ reference to the roles they represent and the phenomenal, sensually experi-
enceable bodies and voices. With this observation, it becomes clear that, alongside
the theories already named, phenomenological reflections on overcoming the sub-
ject/object dichotomy, and on embodied experience and time consciousness—i.e.,
the approaches of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Bernhard
Waldenfels, as well as their application to the theater by Jens Roselt—serve as an-
other important point of reference for my approach.13
When I speak of the perception and effects of performances, I proceed from the
assumption that perception is always dependent upon subjective dispositions. In
taking this as my point of departure, I cannot have as my goal to discover how a par-
ticular performance may have affected the totality of spectators and listeners.
Instead, it can only be a matter of thematizing my own perception in order to draw
attention to those aspects of a theater performance that are normally ignored or de-
liberately tuned out. If the same effects are not triggered in others—and they can
 opera in performance | 11

never be exactly the same ones—then one can nonetheless conclude transubjec-
tively, on the basis of one’s own experience, that at least comparable or even approxi-

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mately the same mechanisms were at work in the other spectators and listeners.14
This is not meant to result in the strengthening or reintroduction of the empirical
methods of reception studies.15 Instead, academics—or, more specifically, I as an
academic—can, by thematizing their (my) own perception, arrive at descriptions
of these processes. These in turn can be transformed, through reflection, into
insights of more generally valid processes of perception. One of these insights could
perhaps consist in deepening our understanding of the extent to which perception
processes in the opera have their foundation in what the phenomenology of time
consciousness refers to as the constant interplay of memory and expectation (or in
Husserl’s terms, “retention” and “protention”).16 According to this model, a
“protoimpression”—for example, a sound, a musical figure, or a voice—inscribes it-
self into memory in the process of perception. This turns the “protoimpression”
into a “retention.” What results from this experience is a determined expectation
that is then brought to bear on the further development of the process. The ex-
pectation of a future “impression,” the “protention,” is thereby aroused. This
concept describes the foundation of every act of perception. However, it is partic-
ularly revealing with respect to the specific, “live” perception of bodies and voices
in opera—even more so when the material in question is the well-known and
fairly limited standard repertoire of opera houses, which allows for strong
expectations. Thus, I arrive at the theater as a “preformed” listener, one with par-
ticular voices already in my head. This happens any time that I know I am going
to see one of the works from the repertory canon that I can anticipate or even
hear in advance. The event of the moment thereby enters into a dynamic interac-
tion with past experiences and future anticipations that I have brought with me;
the present event can produce disappointment, boredom, surprise, or fascination
through diverging from my expectations, or it can—as a result of exceeding
them—produce ecstasy or tedium.
***
In what follows, I would like to illustrate this approach by means of two examples.
In so doing, I will pay particular attention to the reciprocal relationship between rep-
resentation and presence. This relationship can be said to be one of the central fea-
tures or attractions of opera in performance; it challenges, again and again, the
perception of listeners and spectators. Its specific effects can vary greatly. The sud-
den emphasis upon an intense experience of sheer presence can either heighten the
effects of the representational function—i.e., suggest a possible meaning of the
material—or it can interrupt the representational function, counteract it, alienate it,
or simply draw increased attention to one of the most important ingredients of a
12 | clemens risi

live performance: the always risky deployment of individual materialities like bodies
and voices.

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In many of my examples, it is the bodily disposition of the singer-performers
that would seem to occupy centerstage. Here, however, I would like to concentrate
on the dimension of the voice, which is a domain in which the reciprocal relation-
ship between representation and presence can be felt with a special clarity.
Moments in which a specific presence can be felt to manifest itself naturally occur
above all in cases in which one’s perception of a singer-performer’s accomplishment
is visibly marked by his or her concrete state of health or well-being on the day of
the performance. This is even more the case when it is announced before a perfor-
mance begins that a singer is unwell. This is what happened, to give but one exam-
ple, during a performance of Peter Konwitschny’s 2003 staging of Mozart’s Don
Giovanni at the Komische Oper Berlin, which took place on June 11, 2007, with
Johannes Weisser in the title role.
In general, the announcement that a performer is unwell or physically indis-
posed changes the way in which I, as listener, attend to the performance. It always
causes me to listen to how the voice sounds as impaired or vulnerable, to hear if the
indisposition is perceptible, and in particular if the singer, who is so brave (or per-
haps so bold) as to perform despite being ill, is perhaps overexerting him- or herself,
perhaps damaging his or her voice. The fact that a singer is always, in fact, placing
his or her voice at risk becomes even more apparent when such an indisposition
has been announced.
Don Giovanni’s famous canzonetta “Deh, vieni alla finestra,” addressed to
Donna Elvira’s lady-in-waiting, is the first noticeably belcanto-esque number sung
by the protagonist, the first of Don Giovanni’s numbers in which the attention of an
auditorium focuses upon virtuoso, extraordinary singing. The recitative before the
canzonetta ends with Giovanni’s demand to himself, “Ora cantiamo”—i.e., it ends
with a demand that marks singing intradiegetically as singing. In Bettina Bartz and
Werner Hintze’s translation, which was the basis for the Konwitschny staging, the
line was “Dann wollen wir mal singen” (So, let’s sing a bit). In my memory, it had a
kind of lapidary note, colored by dialect: “Dann woll’n wa ma singen.” Thus, the an-
nouncement, spoken by the indisposed singer portraying Giovanni, was audible
and understandable to everyone in the room: here comes the famous canzonetta. It
felt as if the entire room, filled with sympathy and compassion for the unwell singer,
was silently pleading that the canzonetta would come off well. Quite a bit of cough-
ing and throat clearing could be heard among the spectators; it felt sympathetic to
me, a kind of touching or tender moment in which it seemed as if an entire audi-
ence felt that it too would have to sing the canzonetta. At the very least, it was as if a
question had been posed audibly: what if it was me that had to sing now? The audi-
torium was filled with a sense of tension and concentration, carried by the shared
wish that he would succeed, that he would hold strong, connected with the question
 opera in performance | 13

of why the canzonetta couldn’t simply be dropped, or taken over, spontaneously, by

someone else. The thought was suggested all the more by the fact that this staging

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was one that explicitly called into question the notion of a rigid structure of an oper-
atic work, through multiple staged interruptions.17 In the moment, my experience
of the singer (and of all of us, in the audience) was one of being forced into the cor-
set of prescriptions and plans represented by the score and staging. The feeling that
followed was one of empathy with the singer, and indignation over the constraints
engendered by plans and decisions made in advance.
Weisser’s voice sounded more restricted than I would have expected for a
Giovanni singer in such a house; it sounded husky, somewhat dulled. The kind of
excitement that it was lacking can best be heard in the recording made in the same
year (2007) under the direction of Rene Jacobs, available online.18 Despite notice-
able indisposition, Weisser sang the aria without interruption or pause, which is to
say, in principle flawlessly. After the last notes of the canzonetta had faded away,
there was more applause from the audience than at any other moment in the eve-
ning. The applause felt like a sigh of relief, and an expression of gratitude to the
singer, who had risked it—and made it through. However, something else became
clear as well: the presence of the singular performance, created through the experi-
ence of the precarity of the voice, had further effects upon the plane of representa-
tion within the opera. Don Giovanni no longer seemed to be a daredevil, but instead
a very vulnerable man. A question thus presented itself: was it just the singer whom
we, the audience, were able to help with encouragement and sympathy, or was it
not also the singular and unrepeatable character of Don Giovanni that had emerged
this evening, through the specific conditions of the performance?
As I have suggested, there were several moments in Peter Konwitschny’s staging
that at the very least called into question widespread assumptions about the fixed
structure of the work and fixed dramaturgy. There were multiple interruptions, in
particular during Don Ottavio’s second aria,19 but also during the finale, when a suc-
cessive thinning out of the instrumentation resulted in the opera’s conclusion van-
ishing in concrete, material form. The staging, as it had been planned by Peter
Konwitschny and his production team, was thus also an engagement with the sin-
gularity of opera. And yet, at least in the performance I have depicted here, these
planned interruptions and thematizations of the singularity of opera were not nearly
as effective or as powerful as the indisposed Giovanni singer’s nerve-wracking can-
zonetta, which emerged in the unpredictable here and now of performance.
A further example will strengthen this diagnosis, and also show how the entire
concept of a staging can be shaped by this reciprocal relationship between presence
and representation. In Kaspar Holten’s 2012 staging of Lohengrin at the Deutsche
Oper in Berlin, I saw a story that varied significantly from other Lohengrin stagings.
As such, I was clearly moving on the level of representation, the plane where I as
spectator and listener assign specific meanings to that which I see and hear.
14 | clemens risi

Lohengrin was introduced as a talented director or magician, capable of manipulat-

ing crowds with the use of theatrical means. The means that he deployed—for ex-

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ample, putting on swan wings at the back edge of the stage, while the other
characters were all facing toward the front, or reading from a crib sheet during the
Gralserz€ahlung (the Grail Narrative)—were visible only for us in the audience, not
for those standing on stage. From the use of the swan wings in his first entrance,
one could already see that Lohengrin’s means were adapted to the specific task at
hand. Here, this task was to save someone in Brabant who had been wrongly ac-
cused. Lohengrin thus also seemed to be a clever colonizer or missionary, one who
makes use of the means of those who are to be colonized in order to convince them
all the more effectively—or to ambush them. During the prayer of the King (Albert
Dohmen) preceding the divine judgment, Telramund (Gordon Hawkins) kneeled
down and folded his hands. Lohengrin, played by Klaus Florian Vogt, appeared for a
moment to be confused, as if he did not know this gesture, this ritual. However, hav-
ing been informed that everyone present believes that he has been sent by a higher
power—one to which Telramund was now praying—Lohengrin was able to adapt
extremely quickly and even trump Telramund’s gesture: Vogt, looking toward the
people, first raised his arms like a priest or messiah, and then sank to one knee with
an ostentatiously grand gesture of hand-folding (see Fig. 1). Lohengrin, the warrior-
seducer, had adapted to the rituals he encountered among the medieval Christians.
This Lohengrin was a magician, carrying light and fog effects with him wherever
he went—for example, in order to blind Telramund during their battle. However,
with his swan wings—although effective for his entrance—he may have reached too
deep into his box of tricks: Elsa, played by Ricarda Merbeth, saw Lohengrin with his
swan wings later than the others. This was because at the beginning of the action,
she was wearing a blindfold (a sign of her being the accused), one that Lohengrin
first removed after he has stated his condition (“Nie sollst Du mich befragen” [You
are never to ask me. . .]). When Lohengrin removed her blindfold and Elsa saw him
standing right before her, her frightened response was clear. His costume was, to
her eye, obviously over the top. Did she see through him? Everyone else there was
awed by the impression of his entrance. He was supported by an auditory sphere
that, on this reading, also belonged to his self-staging, deployed by him as a means
of strengthening the impression he made. His glimmering entrance, with shim-
mering string notes, had blinded them all. Elsa laid eyes upon him to the sounds of
a different, decidedly more “earthly” music—that of the “Frageverbot” (the prohibi-
tion of the question). As a result, the effect of his appearance was a different one.
She was confused. But in the difficult state in which she found herself, she appar-
ently was able to look beyond the exaggerated self-staging of the new arrival.
Prior to the Grail Narrative, Vogt (playing Lohengrin) pulled small white cards
out of his pocket: this Lohengrin had to crib, to look over the text for the climax of
his staging one more time. Obviously, he had prepared something for this task as
 opera in performance | 15

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Figure 1 Lohengrin. Production: Kasper Holten. Klaus Florian Vogt (Lohengrin), Ricarda Merbeth
(Elsa). Deutsche Oper Berlin 2012. Photo: Marcus Lieberenz.

well. The Grail Narrative thus became legible as a deliberate attempt to produce a
certain effect. Although Lohengrin no longer knew the way forward by heart, it
nonetheless became clear that he had foreseen and predetermined the course of the
action, and had thus noted down the right words—those of the Grail Narrative—on
a notecard that obviously only the spectators could see. During the Grail Narrative,
the chorus approached him as the people of Brabant, kneeling around him as if he
were a Messiah, one who—still clad in wings—now had the air of an angel of death
(see Fig. 2).
The interplay of representation and presence came to the fore in this production
in a way that was, with respect to the stringent representational space of the staging,
entirely unpredictable. This was the result of a unique constellation arising out of
the coincidence of the planned and the unplanned—on the one hand, the director’s
intention with the staging, on the other, the health of the work’s participants. Klaus
Florian Vogt had sung Lohengrin in the production premiere on April 15, 2012, but
16 | clemens risi

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Figure 2 Lohengrin. Production: Kasper Holten. Klaus Florian Vogt (Lohengrin), Chorus. Deutsche
Oper Berlin 2012. Photo: Marcus Lieberenz.

was forced to cancel the next two performances as a result of illness. In the perfor-
mance I saw, which took place on April 25, 2012, he was singing for the first time
since his illness and the two canceled shows. I thought that I noticed, in the uneasy
movements of his hands—which sometimes seemed like a kind of trembling—a
sign of Vogt’s nervousness. One could hear, in his otherwise extraordinarily clear
voice—which can sound boy-like—a kind of scratchiness. But perhaps I only heard
this because he had canceled his last two performances, and everyone in the audi-
ence, including what were obviously a number of Vogt fans, were quite nervous
about whether he had already recovered completely. Vogt’s voice sounded a bit
throaty, more so than usual, and also a bit harder than usual, as if he was in fact still
somewhat ill. But all of the vulnerable high notes appeared with their expected radi-
ance and purity, albeit somewhat shorter-winded than customary. As is frequently
the case in such moments of an existing or even assumed ailment, the perception of
specific challenges in parts that, by virtue of their familiarity, produced concrete
expectations became more intense; successful passages seemed even more pleasing
than usual.
What I found so appealing about this constellation was, once again, the opportu-
nity to observe how representation and presence reciprocally condition and amplify
one another. That the singer, Klaus Florian Vogt, had perhaps not fully recovered
from his cold, coupled with the impression that something of his ailment could still
be heard in his voice, amplified in a unique (and thus unpredictable) way what I
 opera in performance | 17

had taken to be Lohengrin’s function in the performance as director. On the level of

representation, Lohengrin thereby appeared precisely not to be a kind of miraculous

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figure, not like one sent by God, but rather like a mere director or magician or a per-
former of a magician, one not immune to failure. As such, he also seemed to recall
a singer’s fluctuating condition, which varies daily and may cause him to sound ner-
vous or slightly scratchy. The perception of Vogt’s imperfect voice during that perfor-
mance, as an experience of heightened presence, amplified just that aspect of the
performance that, for me, lent the character of Lohengrin the air of a—humanly fal-
lible—actor and manipulator, not that of a superhuman, otherworldly being.
***
What I have been attempting to demonstrate is the coincidence and collaboration of
two components of opera in performance, particularly in the context of
“Regietheater.” These two components can be described as, on the one hand, an in-
telligent representational attitude, and on the other, the form of presence that
emerges from a unique performance carried out by singer-actors on stage. The inter-
play of these two forms is part of the special appeal of any staging of a well-known
opera. Further, I would argue that the reciprocal interferences of these components
are not only perception events for those watching and listening, but also an opportu-
nity for the performers to attain new heights of intensity in their performance. As
such, they are capable of fueling in exemplary fashion the feedback loop between
performers and spectators.
What interests me here is not the question of the extent to which a staged perfor-
mance brings something to the surface that is already latent in the score, and that
had been sleeping there until an interpretation brought it to light. Instead, I am in-
terested in what joins up with the material of the score, what begins to interact (or
cause friction) with what one thinks is a familiar score, what one presumed to be
the familiar tones of the music. Ideally, staging and music enter into a dialogue
with one another, one that not only allows us to hear the music differently, but also
concretely makes the music sound different. A performance is capable of creating a
new reality every evening; it is, in Austin’s sense, always performative, because it is
reality-constituting. It is no longer the work or an interpretation of the work that
stands before one on stage, but rather a new aesthetic reality, one that is submitted
to its own laws, those of the present, and also continually calls them into question.
To draw attention to these processes, to describe them in exemplary fashion, and to
systematize their constituent parts—this is exactly the task of what I would call an
analysis of the performative dimension of opera, of opera in performance.
Translated by Jake Fraser
18 | clemens risi

notes
Clemens Risi is the Chair of Theater Studies at to be understood in this sense, as occupying a

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the Friedrich-Alexander-Universit€at Erlangen- significant role within the canon, and not as a
Nürnberg. Before his appointment at Erlangen, kind of epochal designation.
he was Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessor) of 6. See, for example, Hermann Danuser,
opera and music theater at the Freie Universit€at “Zur Aktualit€at musikalischer
Berlin. He studied musicology, theater studies, Interpretationstheorie,” Musiktheorie 11, no. 1
and business administration in Mainz, Munich, (1996): 39–51; Hermann Gottschewski,
and Rome. He held visiting professorships at “Interpretation als Struktur,” in Musik als Text.
Brown University (spring 2008) and Bericht über den internationalen Kongress der
the University of Chicago (spring 2010). He Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Freiburg im
has published about opera and music Breisgau 1993, ed. Hermann Danuser, Tobias
theater from the seventeenth century to the Plebuch, vol. 2 (Kassel: B€arenreiter, 1998),
present time; performance analysis; and 155–59; Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen,
rhythm and perception. He is the author of Auf “Musikwissenschaft. Musik—Interpretation—
dem Weg zu einem italienischen Wissenschaft,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 57,
Musikdrama (Tutzing, 2004) and of Oper in no. 1 (2000): 78–90; Albrecht Riethmüller,
performance (Berlin, 2017), and is preparing “Interpretation in der Musik,” in Interpretation.
another monograph for the Parma Verdi Prize Abhandlungen der Geistes- und
about Verdi in performance. Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse. Akademie der
1. “Die Opernbühne muß den Zuschauer so Wissenschaften und der Literatur, vol. 6, ed.
herausfordern, daß der auf die €außerste Kante Gerhard Funke, Albrecht Riethmüller, Otto
seines Sitzes rutscht und von dort aus, hellwach Zwierlein (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1998), 17–30.
und mit kritischer Lust, seine private 7. See, for example, among others: Carolyn
Auseinandersetzung mit dem Gebotenen riskiert, Abbate, “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical
mit jeder Arie, mit jeder Fuge und mit jeder Inquiry 30, no. 3 (2004): 505–36; Joy H. Calico,
Bewegung.” (“Oper muß wieder anstrengend Brecht at the Opera (Berkeley: University of
werden. Regisseur Hans Neuenfels über California Press, 2008); Gundula Kreuzer,
Probleme und Skandale des Musiktheaters, im “Voices from Beyond: Don Carlos and Twentieth-
Gespr€ach mit Klaus Umbach,” Der Spiegel 46 Century Regie,” Cambridge Opera Journal 18
[1982]: 249.) (2006): 151–79; David J. Levin, Unsettling Opera:
2. Compare Clemens Risi, Oper in Staging Mozart, Wagner, and Zemlinsky (Chicago:
performance: Analysen zur Aufführungsdimension University of Chicago Press, 2007); Christopher
von Operninszenierungen (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, Morris, “Wagnervideo,” Opera Quarterly 27, nos.
2017); English translation in preparation. 2–3 (2011), 235–55; Stephan Mösch, “Störung,
3. My approach is indebted to and influenced Verstörung, Zerstörung. Regietheater als
by the work of Carolyn Abbate, Erika Fischer- Rezeptionsproblem,” in Angst vor der Zerstörung,
Lichte, David J. Levin, and Jens Roselt, among 216–32; Jürgen Schl€ader, “Strategien der Opern-
others. €
Bilder. Uberlegungen zur Typologie der
4. On the debate surrounding the term Klassikerinszenierungen im musikalischen
“Regietheater,” see Wolfgang Ullrich: “Die Kunst €
Theater,” in Asthetik der Inszenierung.
ist Ausdruck ihrer Zeit. Genese und Problematik Dimensionen eines künstlerischen, kulturellen und
eines Topos der Kunsttheorie,” in Angst vor der gesellschaftlichen Ph€anomens, ed. Josef Früchtl,
Zerstörung: Der Meister Künste zwischen Archiv und Jörg Zimmermann (Frankfurt am Main:
Erneuerung, ed. Robert Sollich, Clemens Risi, Suhrkamp, 2001), 183–97; Mary Ann Smart,
Stephan Reus, Stephan Jöris (Berlin: Theater der “Resisting Rossini, or Marlon Brando plays
Zeit, 2008), 233–46; as well as Stephan Mösch, Figaro,” Opera Quarterly 27, nos. 2–3 (2011):
€
“Geistes Gegenwart? Uberlegungen €
zur Asthetik 153–78; Robert Sollich, “Staging Wagner—and Its
des Regietheaters in der Oper,” in Mitten im History: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on a
Leben: Musiktheater von der Oper zur Everyday Contemporary Stage,” The Wagner Journal 3, no. 1
Performance, ed. Anno Mungen (Würzburg: (2009): 5–13.
Königshausen & Neumann, 2011), 85–103. €
8. Compare Erika Fischer-Lichte, Asthetik des
5. It has been above all in literary studies that Performativen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
processes of canonization have been the object 2004); in English: The Transformative Power of
of intensified scholarly focus. The concept of the Performance: A New Aesthetics (London/New
“repertoire-classic” or the “staging of a classic” is York: Routledge, 2008).
 opera in performance | 19

9. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and (1893–1917),” in Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke,

Gender Constitution: An Essay in vol. 10, ed. Rudolf Boehm (Haag: Martinus
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Nijhoff, 1966), 19–72; Husserl, “Die Bernauer

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Journal 40, no. 4 (Dec. 1988): 519–20. Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/
€
10. Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Asthetik: Eine 18),” in Husserliana, vol. 32, ed. Rudolf Bernet and
€
Kolumne: Uber die Wünschbarkeit einer Kunst Dieter Lohmar (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff,
des Nichtverstehens,” Merkur 48, no. 542 (1994): 2001), 3–49.
426–31. 17. On this point, see, for example, Holger
11. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Noltze’s review of the premiere, broadcast on
Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford: Deutschlandfunk on March 24, 2003, https://
Stanford University Press, 2004). www.deutschlandfunk.de/don-giovanni.691.de.
12. Abbate, “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?,” html?dram:article_id¼47387 (last accessed
505–36. August 26, 2019).
13. Compare Jens Roselt, Ph€anomenologie des 18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Theaters (Munich: Fink, 2008). v¼zo5aCqIUxM8 (last accessed August 26,
14. On the demand for “inter- and 2019).
transsubjective validity” for “descriptions of 19. Compare Jürgen Schl€ader, “‘. . . da der Tod
perceptions,” cf. Michael Weingarten, der wahre Endzweck unsers lebens ist. . .’:
Wahrnehmen (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1999), 9. €
Theorie-Uberlegungen zu Peter Konwitschnys
15. Roselt, Ph€anomenologie des Theaters, 324–25. Dekonstruktion der zweiten Ottavio-Arie,” in
16. Compare Edmund Husserl, “Zur Mitten im Leben, 119–45.
Ph€anomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins