Opera’s Second Life: Katie Mitchell’s Contributions to Contemporary Opera-Making

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Notes

1. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 269.

2. Ibid., 269.

3. Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, Opera’s Second Death (New York & London: Routledge, 2002), viii, emphasis added.

4. Nicholas Till, ‘“I Don’t Mind if Something’s Operatic, just as Long it’s not Opera.” A Critical Practice for New Opera and Music Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review 14, no. 1 (2004): 14–24 (18).

5. Ibid., 18.

6. Katie Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author, London, March 2019.

7. Quoted in Dan Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell: Learning from Europe’, in Contemporary European Theatre Directors eds., Maria M. Delgado and Dan Rebellato (New York & London: Routledge, 2010), 323.

8. Andrew Clements, ‘Written on Skin – Review’, The Guardian, July 8, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/08/written-on-skin-review (accessed May 9, 2019), emphasis by the author.

9. Nicholas Till, ‘The Operatic Work: Texts, Performances, Reception and Repertories’, in The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies ed., Nicholas Till (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 225–53 (227). For reasons of space and scope, I will not go into theoretical implications concerning the relationship between text and performance. I deal with the matter in Mario Frendo, ‘Ancient Greek Tragedy as Performance: The Literature-Performance Problematic’, New Theatre Quarterly 35, no. 1 (2019): 19–32.

10. Till, ‘The Operatic Work’, 231.

11. Gerard Davis, ‘Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor: Much More than a “Mad Scene”’, The Royal Opera House News, November 20, 2017, https://www.roh.org.uk/news/donizettis-lucia-di-lammermoor-much-more-than-a-mad-scene, (accessed November 13, 2019).

12. Romana Margherita Pugliese, ‘The Origins of Lucia di Lammermoor’s Cadenza’, Cambridge Opera Journal 16, no. 1 (2004): 12–42 (27).

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 26, emphasis by the author.

15. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

16. Bernard Foccroulle, unpublished interview with the author, Paris, April 2019.

17. Bernard Foccroulle, Faire vivre l’opéra: Un art qui donne sens au monde (France: Actes Sud, 2018), 60, translation from the French original by the author.

18. Till, ‘The Operatic Event: Opera Houses and Opera Audiences’, Opera Studies, (2012): 70–92 (70).

19. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

20. Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 48.

21. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

22. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 46.

23. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Mitchell quoted in Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell: Learning from Europe’, 335.

27. Frendo, ‘Ancient Greek Tragedy as Performance’, 24.

28. Mitchell, Interview. In the quotation Mitchell refers to a performance dramaturgy for Cosí Fan Tutte that she prepared for a co-production between the English National Opera (UK) and the Metropolitan Opera (New York). The production never materialised and Mitchell has yet to present Cosí Fan Tutte in performance.

29. Ibid.

30. Christopher Wintle, ‘Opera in Flux’ in Written on Skin DVD brochure (Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 2013), 7, emphasis by the author.

31. Eugenio Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House (London New York: Routledge, 2010), 24, emphasis in original.

32. Katie Mitchell in Maria Shevtsova, ‘Katie Mitchell (b. 1964)’ in Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre Maria Shevtsova and Christopher Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 179.

33. Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy, 24.

34. Mitchell in Shevtsova, ‘Katie Mitchell (b. 1964)’, 179.

35. Ibid., 179–80.

36. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

37. Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 57.

38. Ibid., 67.

39. For reasons of space I will not engage further on the implications of ‘pure’ music. I deal more extensively on the matter in Mario Frendo, ‘Nietzsche’s Musical Perspectivism: Interdisciplinary Ontologies in Performance’ in Stefan Aquilina and Malaika Sarko-Thomas, eds., Interdisciplinarity in the Performing Arts: Contemporary Perspectives (Malta: Malta University Press, 2018), 121–43. For further elaboration on the notion of ‘pure’ music see also Jean-Luc Nancy’s Listening.

40. Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy, 106.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., emphasis in original.

45. Ibid., 101.

46. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 7, emphasis in original.

50. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Katie Mitchell, The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre (London & New York: Routledge, 2009), 160.

54. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

55. Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy, 13, emphasis in original.

56. Mitchell, unpublished interview with the author.

57. Ibid.

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Mario Frendo

Mario Frendo is Senior Lecturer of theatre and performance and Head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta, where he is director of CaP, a research group focusing on links between culture and performance. His research interests include musicality in theatre, opera and music theatre, ancient Greek tragedy, and relations between philosophical thought and performance.