Voicing Persephone: Narrative, Voice and Structure in The Pomegranate Cycle

Abstract

Historical repertory commonly uses threats to a women's virtue, her person, or her death as a narrative device to produce the moral or emotional climax in opera. The fate of these female characters reinforces patriarchal notions of femininity and acceptable gender behaviour, or alternatively is intended to reveal the complexity of feeling experienced by male characters. This is problematic because historical opera forms the overwhelming majority of all operatic works staged by major opera houses. This article documents the way The Pomegranate Cycle (2010) confronts archaic representations of women in opera and models a new narrative trajectory of healing and growth for its central female character, Persephone. It examines key choices in the works story, structure and power-relations embedded in vocal timbres as a mean of commenting on problems in the operatic tradition and its historical development. In doing so, this article seeks to encourage the production of new operatic works, especially works where female characters exhibit autonomy, and where female singers have more choice and agency over the kinds of women they portray through their performing bodies.

Notes

¹ Reviewers of this article have noted that The Pomegranate Cycle follows on from two earlier operatic works by Australian composers addressing issues of gender within opera: Andrée Greenwell's Sweet Death (1991) and David Chesworth's satire Recital (1989). At the time of writing, both works remain unknown to the author because scores or recordings of the works are not readily available. However the ways in which these works critique operatic misogyny have been examined by Linda Kouvaras, who writes that ‘in postmodern fashion, Sweet Death and Recital draw a fine line indeed between critically parodying misogynistic concerns in what the layperson perceives as traditional opera, and re-enacting them’ (1994, 127).

² From http://www.textileaudio.com/

³ While neither survey method was comprehensive, they provide a useful numerical picture of the relationship between repertory and contemporary operatic works. More recent surveys of repertory were not available at the time of publication.

⁴ For a more detailed mapping of operatic character tropes and an overview of feminists critiques of operatic narratives see Klein (2012).

⁵ For information about the aesthetics of glitch, see ‘Chapter 3: Minimal Objects in Microsound’ (Demers 2010) and ‘The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music’ (Cascone 2000).

⁶ See Grant (1962, 131).

⁷ This synopsis is based upon a translation of the Hymn to Demeter by Gregory Nagy (2011).

⁸ There have been numerous anthologies and monographs dedicated to the analysis of the Persephone myth and its myriad of adaptations and reappropriations. The study of Persephone can, in a metaphorical and literal sense, be understood as an ‘archaeology’, so much so that Ann Suter wrote a book entitled The Narcissus and the Pomegranate: An Archaeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Suter aimed to correct what she perceived as frequent misrepresentations of the myth, beginning with the text of the Homeric Hymn and moving onto other external linguistic and historical sources (2002, 1).

⁹ Core is the same person as Persephone. Her name change is symbolic of the transformation she undergoes whilst in the underworld, from the innocent girl identified as Core/Kore to the powerful Queen of the Underworld and wife of Hades identified as Persephone. Robert Graves refers to ‘Core’ whereas other English-language texts I have read refer to ‘Kore’. I have decided to use Kore as my preferred spelling when not referring specifically to Robert Graves.

¹⁰ See http://www.textileaudio.com/libretto/

¹¹ Kore is, however, given an aria of internal dialogue from a frozen moment occurring directly after her rape: ‘Narcissus Bloom and the Rape of the Pomegranate’.

¹² Video footage demonstrating the performance of “Ripping” can be viewed online: http://www.textileaudio.com/tag/ripping/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eve Klein

EveKlein is Convenor of Music, Bachelor of Music Course Coordinator and Lecturer in Music at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia. Her current research is focused on the aesthetics and politics of recorded classical music, sound ecologies and contemporary opera performance. She has also published on topics including Maltese Australian music and culture, classical-popular music hybridity, recording practice and digital music cultures. Eve has an active career as a professional opera singer, music producer and composer. She has sung with Opera Australia, and performances of her works feature regularly around Australia and abroad. Recent festival performances include Brisbane Festival (Brisbane), Underbelly Arts (Sydney), Turra New Music Festival (Perth), Undisclosed Territories (Indonesia), Melaka Art & Performance Festival (Malaysia) and the International Festival of Artistic Innovation (England). Email: [email protected]