Opera as Hypermedium

Drawing on the concept of hypermediacy from media studies, this book situates opera within the larger context of contemporary media practices, and particularly those that play up the multiplicity, awareness and enjoyment of media. It is driven by the underlying question of what politics of representation and perception opera performs within this context. This entails approaching operas as audiovisual events and paying attention to the various effects of immediacy that they produce.

Tereza Havelková is Assistant Professor in musicology at Charles University in Prague. Her research concentrates on contemporary relationships between opera and the media, and the intersection of aesthetics and politics in opera and music theatre both present and past. She is the co-convenor of the Music Theatre Working Group with the International Federation for Theatre Research.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Theorizing Opera as Hypermedium
Chapter One: Allegory and Excess: Reading Hypermedial Opera
Chapter Two: Theatricality and Absorption: Listening for a Point of Experience
Chapter Three: Liveness and Mediatization: (De)constructing Dichotomies
Chapter Four: Synaesthesia or Anaesthesia? Towards a Politics of Hypermedial Opera
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index