Ana Vujanović
THE STATE OF THINGS
Tema „video u teatru“ spada u legitimne i važne teme savremenih izvođačkih umetnosti, ako ih – svesni realnosti koja nas okružuje – posmatramo kao umetnost u doba kulture, koja je nezamisliva bez masmedija i digitalnih tehnologija. Ipak, o temi „upotreba videa na lokalnoj tetarskoj sceni“ se teško može napisati ma kakva analiza, a da nije oštra kritika. Za takvu analizu nedostaje sam predmet. The present state of things o tom pitanju se može objasniti primedbom da kako je svet za lokalni kontekst, pa i scenu, još 1990ih prestao da bude relevantna referenca, to je i upotreba videa u lokalnom teatru samo neznatna a logična „kolateralna šteta“ takvog društvenog samo-konstituisanja.
S jedne strane, u prilici sam da vidim mnoga izvođačka dela na internacionalnoj sceni, a sa druge sam – pre svega zbog koselekcioniranja BITEF 40 Show casea – prilično upoznata sa lokalnom i alternativnom i mainstreamom scenom. dalje >>
Showing posts with label Operrrra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operrrra. Show all posts
Operrrra je ženskog roda, osvrt I. Neimarević
U utorak, sredu i četvrtak uveče, u okviru BELEF-a, u Botaničkoj bašti “Jevremovac” izveden je projekat “Operrrra je ženskog roda”.
Osvrt: Ivana Neimarević (Radion Beograd, 3. program)
“Ako znaš da si večeras u operi, priznaćemo ti sve ostalo”.Ovim rečima je tri noći zaredom beogradska publika bila “dozivana” i “uvođena” u novootkriveni prostor nedovršene zgrade Botaničkog instituta Biološkog fakulteta u Botaničkoj bašti “Jevremovac”, u kojoj je, u okviru ovogodišnjeg BELEF-a, izveden projekat “Operrrra je ženskog roda”. Kao jedan u nizu operkih “ekscesa” – operskih produkcija koje se u našoj sredini po pravilu realizuju samo u okviru visokobudžetnih festivala, predstavljen je rad Bojana Đorđeva i članova grupe Teorija koja Hoda – grupe mladih umetnika i teoretičara koji poslednjih godina dosledno rade na predstavljanju i promovisanju opere kao (još uvek) “žive” umetnosti i prakse. Kroz čitav niz “prestupa” u odnosu na tradicionalno poimanje termina “opera”, počev od same strukture dela u čijoj se tradicionalno tročinoj operskog formi zapravo kriju tri nezavisna dela, preko konceptualizacije i problematizacije tehničkih aspekata izvođenja, oslanjanja na medije masovne komunikacije, do neopterćenog, slobodnog odnosa “elitinih “ i “popularnih” muzičkih (i ne samo muzičkih) žanrova, zapravo su predstavljeni osnovni teorijski koncepti kojima se danas definiše termin “postopera”.
Jedna od osnovnih pretpostavki – da opera ima autorefleksivni karakter, da je ona danas neizostavno i «opera o operi», ovom prilikom je sprovedena na više nivoa. Osnovna teza projekta da je «opera ženskog roda» razmatrana je kroz odnos «drugosti», «različitosti» - kako «glasa koji peva» (kao osnovne razlike između teatra i opere), tako i ženskog glasa, odnosno ženskog lika kao večitog «drugog». Formalno, kroz tri čina opere mapirane su mogućnosti prisustva glasa u operi – preko tradicionalnog operskog koloraturnog glasa u kompoziciji Sažeti prikaz neumitnog i tragičnog toka sudbine koji je krhko biće Male Sirene odveo u potpunu propast Gorana Kapetanovića, preko neimpostiranog «glasa koji peva» u kompoziciji Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević, do glasa koji ne peva, već proizvodi različite zvukove (govori/viče/brboće) u završnom činu «otvorenog» naziva Vaše ime ovde irske umetnice Dženifer Volš. Međutim, možda sugestivnije nego sama konepcija projekta, ovaj akutelni teorijski stav bio je posredovan kroz definisanje «glavnog lika» opere – Male Sirene. Naime, kao personifikacija «drugog», «ženskog», i pre svega «glasa koji peva», ona se nametnula kao svojevrsna lajt-tema čitave opere. Zavodljivost glasa sirene/opere i trenutak njegovog gubitka, rediteljski su duhovito posredovani u prvom činu, višestrukim ponavljanjem poznate sekvence iz Diznijevog animiranog filma «Mala sirena» u kojoj ona isplivava na površinu, napuštajući okvir mitskog, podvodnog sveta pretvarajući se u ženu, odnosno gubeći svoj glas. Poigravanje sa zavodljivošću ženskog glasa, odnosno aludiranje na poznato «dozivanje» sirena, možda se može prepoznati i u teorijskim prolozima Jelene Novak i Ivane Stamatović, koje su posetioce «uvodile» u svet opere sakrivene iza paravana, svedene na odraze koji su se reflektovali na panoima i sopstvene glasove.
Taj upliv tehnološkog, digitalnog i medijskog, kao jedna od osnovnih karakteristika savremene opere, u projektu «Operrrra je ženskog roda» konceptualizovan je i uveden kao ravnopravan «lik». Na sceni je napravljen «kopernikanski obrt» - medijski posredovanom slikom izvođenja, rediteljski odabranim sekvencama «živog» dešavanja iza paravana, kao i sekvencama snimljenih u istom prostoru u «prošlosti», publika je pratila one aspekte operskog izvođenja koji su tradicionalno sakriveni od očiju publike (rad reditelja, dramaturga, dizajnera, ton-majstora)... Tako su glavni likovi opere postali ambijent i tehnologija, koji su ujedno bili i vezivno tkivo zapravo nepostojećeg narativa. Na taj način, problematizovan je i sam postupak tehničke produkcije opere, odnosno aktuelizovano pitanje granica operskog medija.
U izvođenju projekta «Operrrra je ženskog roda» učestvovao je relativno veliki izvođački korpus – u prvom činu, u veoma uspelom izvođenju Kapetanovićeve kompozicije, solistkinje Anetu Ilić i Dariju Olajoš pratio je instrumentalni ansambl pod upravom Premila Petrovića. Drugi čin opere, kompoziciju Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević izvele su autorka i Vladislava Đorđević na fonu snimljenog zvučnog zapisa, dok je u završnom činu, vokalne «akrobacije» bliske vokalnom prosedeu Meredit Monk, izvela sama Dženifer Volš. Iako su, pojedinačno, izvođenja sva tri čina bila vizuelno i auditivno atraktivna, njihovim arbitrarnim povezivanjem u jedinstvenu celinu, na površinu su izašle izvesne problematičnosti ovakve rediteljske odluke. Naime, dok je sled tri dela teorijski sasvim opravdan i uspeo, centralni čin opere, kompozicija Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević uneo je izvesni dramaturški disbalans. Uporno ponavljanje istih muzičkih i rediteljskih rešenja, čini se, nije imalo svoje opravdanje, te se postepeno gubio prvobitni efekat dobrih zamisli, a izvođenje je zapadalo u hipertrofiju.
Najnoviji projekat Bojana Đorđeva i Teorije koja Hoda, srećom, neće završiti kao još jedan festivalski «eksces». Budući da je autorima već upućen poziv da učestvuju kao gosti na ovogodišnjem BITEF-u, ostaje mogućnost da se intervencijama u ovom «otovorenom» delu, teorijski prepoznatljivom i aktuelnom konceptu pruži umetnički još atraktivnije i efektnije telo.
Osvrt: Ivana Neimarević (Radion Beograd, 3. program)
“Ako znaš da si večeras u operi, priznaćemo ti sve ostalo”.Ovim rečima je tri noći zaredom beogradska publika bila “dozivana” i “uvođena” u novootkriveni prostor nedovršene zgrade Botaničkog instituta Biološkog fakulteta u Botaničkoj bašti “Jevremovac”, u kojoj je, u okviru ovogodišnjeg BELEF-a, izveden projekat “Operrrra je ženskog roda”. Kao jedan u nizu operkih “ekscesa” – operskih produkcija koje se u našoj sredini po pravilu realizuju samo u okviru visokobudžetnih festivala, predstavljen je rad Bojana Đorđeva i članova grupe Teorija koja Hoda – grupe mladih umetnika i teoretičara koji poslednjih godina dosledno rade na predstavljanju i promovisanju opere kao (još uvek) “žive” umetnosti i prakse. Kroz čitav niz “prestupa” u odnosu na tradicionalno poimanje termina “opera”, počev od same strukture dela u čijoj se tradicionalno tročinoj operskog formi zapravo kriju tri nezavisna dela, preko konceptualizacije i problematizacije tehničkih aspekata izvođenja, oslanjanja na medije masovne komunikacije, do neopterćenog, slobodnog odnosa “elitinih “ i “popularnih” muzičkih (i ne samo muzičkih) žanrova, zapravo su predstavljeni osnovni teorijski koncepti kojima se danas definiše termin “postopera”.
Jedna od osnovnih pretpostavki – da opera ima autorefleksivni karakter, da je ona danas neizostavno i «opera o operi», ovom prilikom je sprovedena na više nivoa. Osnovna teza projekta da je «opera ženskog roda» razmatrana je kroz odnos «drugosti», «različitosti» - kako «glasa koji peva» (kao osnovne razlike između teatra i opere), tako i ženskog glasa, odnosno ženskog lika kao večitog «drugog». Formalno, kroz tri čina opere mapirane su mogućnosti prisustva glasa u operi – preko tradicionalnog operskog koloraturnog glasa u kompoziciji Sažeti prikaz neumitnog i tragičnog toka sudbine koji je krhko biće Male Sirene odveo u potpunu propast Gorana Kapetanovića, preko neimpostiranog «glasa koji peva» u kompoziciji Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević, do glasa koji ne peva, već proizvodi različite zvukove (govori/viče/brboće) u završnom činu «otvorenog» naziva Vaše ime ovde irske umetnice Dženifer Volš. Međutim, možda sugestivnije nego sama konepcija projekta, ovaj akutelni teorijski stav bio je posredovan kroz definisanje «glavnog lika» opere – Male Sirene. Naime, kao personifikacija «drugog», «ženskog», i pre svega «glasa koji peva», ona se nametnula kao svojevrsna lajt-tema čitave opere. Zavodljivost glasa sirene/opere i trenutak njegovog gubitka, rediteljski su duhovito posredovani u prvom činu, višestrukim ponavljanjem poznate sekvence iz Diznijevog animiranog filma «Mala sirena» u kojoj ona isplivava na površinu, napuštajući okvir mitskog, podvodnog sveta pretvarajući se u ženu, odnosno gubeći svoj glas. Poigravanje sa zavodljivošću ženskog glasa, odnosno aludiranje na poznato «dozivanje» sirena, možda se može prepoznati i u teorijskim prolozima Jelene Novak i Ivane Stamatović, koje su posetioce «uvodile» u svet opere sakrivene iza paravana, svedene na odraze koji su se reflektovali na panoima i sopstvene glasove.
Taj upliv tehnološkog, digitalnog i medijskog, kao jedna od osnovnih karakteristika savremene opere, u projektu «Operrrra je ženskog roda» konceptualizovan je i uveden kao ravnopravan «lik». Na sceni je napravljen «kopernikanski obrt» - medijski posredovanom slikom izvođenja, rediteljski odabranim sekvencama «živog» dešavanja iza paravana, kao i sekvencama snimljenih u istom prostoru u «prošlosti», publika je pratila one aspekte operskog izvođenja koji su tradicionalno sakriveni od očiju publike (rad reditelja, dramaturga, dizajnera, ton-majstora)... Tako su glavni likovi opere postali ambijent i tehnologija, koji su ujedno bili i vezivno tkivo zapravo nepostojećeg narativa. Na taj način, problematizovan je i sam postupak tehničke produkcije opere, odnosno aktuelizovano pitanje granica operskog medija.
U izvođenju projekta «Operrrra je ženskog roda» učestvovao je relativno veliki izvođački korpus – u prvom činu, u veoma uspelom izvođenju Kapetanovićeve kompozicije, solistkinje Anetu Ilić i Dariju Olajoš pratio je instrumentalni ansambl pod upravom Premila Petrovića. Drugi čin opere, kompoziciju Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević izvele su autorka i Vladislava Đorđević na fonu snimljenog zvučnog zapisa, dok je u završnom činu, vokalne «akrobacije» bliske vokalnom prosedeu Meredit Monk, izvela sama Dženifer Volš. Iako su, pojedinačno, izvođenja sva tri čina bila vizuelno i auditivno atraktivna, njihovim arbitrarnim povezivanjem u jedinstvenu celinu, na površinu su izašle izvesne problematičnosti ovakve rediteljske odluke. Naime, dok je sled tri dela teorijski sasvim opravdan i uspeo, centralni čin opere, kompozicija Oglasi/Klasifajds Anje Đorđević uneo je izvesni dramaturški disbalans. Uporno ponavljanje istih muzičkih i rediteljskih rešenja, čini se, nije imalo svoje opravdanje, te se postepeno gubio prvobitni efekat dobrih zamisli, a izvođenje je zapadalo u hipertrofiju.
Najnoviji projekat Bojana Đorđeva i Teorije koja Hoda, srećom, neće završiti kao još jedan festivalski «eksces». Budući da je autorima već upućen poziv da učestvuju kao gosti na ovogodišnjem BITEF-u, ostaje mogućnost da se intervencijama u ovom «otovorenom» delu, teorijski prepoznatljivom i aktuelnom konceptu pruži umetnički još atraktivnije i efektnije telo.
Operrrra je ženskog roda, izveštaj Z. Premate
U okviru pozorišnog programa BELEF-a u utorak, 16. avgusta, u botaničkoj bašti “Jevremovac” premijerno je izvedena eksperimentalna opera reditelja Bojana Đorđeva pod nazivom “Opera je ženskog roda”.
IZVEŠTAJ Z. PREMATE (Radio Beograd 2)
Sudbina naše domaće opere kao nejakog pastorka zvanične muzičke scene potvrdila se na BELEF-u još jednom: nova eksperimentalna opera mladog reditelja Bojana Đorđeva dospela je na festival ne u okviru muzičkog, već pozorišnog programa. Taj podatak, naravno, nije uticao na ovaj multimedijalni projekat koji je zamišljen i ostvaren kao eksperiment, konceptualno-teorijsko delo, i, naravno, kao umetničko delo. Pripadnik grupe “Teorija koja hoda”, za koju je teorijsko estetička eksplikacija uslov da se jedan artefakt ili akcija nazove umetničkim, Bojan Đorđev je svoju zamisao od početka vodio teorijski samosvesno. Teorija je, uostalom, postala toliko moćna da je otvoreno ušla u ovo umetničko delo kao njegov prolog pa je opera započela kao teorijska “priča o operi” koju su ispričale muzikološkinje Jelena Novak i Ivana Stamatović. One su rad svog kolege Đorđeva objasnile sa stanovišta Vitgenštajnove teorije o jezičkim igrama i sa stanovišta teorije roda, odnosno, ženskog glasa na operskoj sceni. I – “Opera je ženskog roda” je mogla da počne.
Bojan Đorđev je svoju operu zamislio u tri celine čiji su autori različiti: obnovio je i proglasio je operskom, kompoziciju Gorana Kapetanovića “Mala Sirena” iz 1994. godine, poručio novu kompoziciju koja se može nazvati i operom od Anje Đorđević, pa celu trilogiju završio vokalnim I kinetičkim performansom kompozitorke iz Irske Dženifer Volš. Takva koncepcija celine iz nekompatibilnih delova već upućuje na autoreferentan stav Đorđeva o onome što radi i, na kraju, na njegovo mišljenje o tome šta je opera danas i ovde. Takav ironijski stav naglašen je novim i, ako hoćete, eksperimentalnim gezamtkunstverkom koji je Đorđev osmislio: nema scene, glume, često ni tradicionalnih akustičkih instrumenata, a ponekad ni muzike, kostim je uglavnom nevažan, libreto ili ne postoji ili je predimenzioniran i raspričan, nema čak ni naracije kao takve. Ali, zato ima live-slikanja I live-pisanja, viodeo-kamera, platna, montaže, svetla, kompjutera, jednom rečju – simultanog dejstva polimedija. Opera se, na neki duhovit i jedinstven način, i interpretira i imitira, odnosno, odvija se “in real time”, ali se prati posredovano, na velikim ekranima koji su namenjeni gledaocima u amfitatru. Pravo zbivanje-izvođenje dešava se izvan scene, snima se kamerama i, live-montažom emituje na ekran in real time. Uz taj, emituju se i drugi, ranije napravljeni snimci tako da je vizuelna komponenta opere veoma raskošna I atraktivna. Bojan Đorđev sebe smatra kustosom ove live-muzičke izložbe u kojoj je njegova izjava da je reč o operi dovoljna da ono što vidimo i čujemo počnemo da čitamo u operskom ključu. A, ako to učinimo, sudarićemo se sa parodijom gezamtkunstverka u kojoj je malo šta u uzročno-posledičnoj vezi, ali je mnogo toga aluzivno ili analogno povezano, često samo nabacano u nekom besmislenom nabrajanju, nagomilano kao atrakcija, senzacija i spektakl. Susrećemo se sa parodijom koja prenaglašava simultanost dejstva raznih umetnosti pretvorivši je u simultanost zbivanja koje se odvija pred gledaocima. Namerno kažem “gledaocima” jer vizuelna strana ovog projekta nadilazi njegov akustički, odnosno, muzički parametar. Muzika se, od Kapetanovićeve “Male sirene”, preko “Oglasa” Anje Đorđević, do performansa Dženifer Volš, sve više povlači i ustupa mesto zvuku kao takvom. Slika sa ekrana nam saopštava da je zvuk koji čujemo baš zvuk opere.
U ovoj operi koja bi htela da bude opera tako se i ponašaju pevajući glasovi: oni zaista pevaju u Kapetanovićevom činu, predimenzionirano operatični, nasglašeno feminini, u kemp-komunikaciji koja klasičnu operu sa njenim konvencijama izvrće ruglu. U činu Anje Đorđević pevajući glas postaje pop-pevački ženski glas, nenametljivo erotizovan. Njena opera se prožima sa masovnom pop-kulturom i putem libreta koji je sačinjen od tekstova malih ljubavnih oglasa. U činu Dženifer Volš ova detronizacija opere kao ritualne forme visoke kulture nastavlja se i dovodi do oksimorona u trenutku kada kompozitorka, brzo pevajući, niže veliki broj sasvim sitnih, ali jasno prepoznatljivih isečaka najpopularnijih pop-pesama. Opera se, na kraju, davi u pop-prosečnosti, barem kada je reč o muzici, i ta njena ritualna smrt je samo to – još jedan gezamtkunstverk ritual sa ukusom cinizma. Sličan put prelaze i libreta: u Kapetanovićevoj “Maloj sireni” teksta, zapravo, i nema, osim dva-tri citata glasa Igora Stravinskog. U “Oglasima” Anje Đorđević zbivanje je pretrpano tekstovima: ona svojim neoperskim, pop-glasom peva tekstove malih oglasa prevedenih na engleski, Vladislava Đorđević čita, opet na engleskom, nešto kao odlomke iz psihoanalitičarskog priručnika, a na jednom od ekrana emituje se snimak u kome njihova saradnica, Dušanka Stojanović, kuca na pisaćoj mašini tekst koji joj tog trenutka padne na pamet u ironičnoj parodiji na čuvene nadrealističke akcije beleženja toka svesti. Dženifer Volš se u svom impresivnom i sugestivnom performansu, oslanja na dokumentarni snimak u kome jedna žena priča o svom ljubavnom životu u mladosti. Naravno, tu su i stupidni tekstovi pop-pesama koji, nadovezani jedan na drugi, ponovo celu komunikaciju govornim jezikom dovode do oksimorona. Dakle, od njenog početka do njenog kraja opera sa naslovom “Opera je ženskog roda” se ironično obračunava sa libretom kao tekstom-jezikom, sa melodijom koja bi trebalo da je njegov eksponent i sa operskim glasom koji tekst izgovara pevajući melodiju koja ga proiznosi. Ako je opera ženskog roda, kako je u svojoj čuvenoj izjavi rekao još Vagner, i ako je pevaju ženski glasovi koji u nju ugrađuju svoje erotizovano telo, kako to tvrdi teorija roda, onda je degradacija opere i žene u ovomeksperimentu Bojana Đorđeva izvedena vedro, samozadovoljno i vešto, čak sa opscenim uživanjem u svemu tome. Sa druge strane, u okviru medijskog gezamtkunstverka, nužno su u prvi plan izbili tehnički gadžeti: mikrofoni, kamere, miksete, projektori, reflektori, reportažna kola, ekrani, kompjuteri. Glavnu ulogu u ostvarenju ove opere nemaju više pevači, već teoretičari, dramaturzi, dizajneri, filmski režiseri, majstori zvuka i svetla, kompjuterski manipulanti. I sve to odvija se u nikad sazidanom amfiteatru zgrade Biološkog instututa, amfiteatru koji je već postao ruševina, iako nikada nije postao zgrada.
Ironija ove analogije ne može biti očiglednija.
IZVEŠTAJ Z. PREMATE (Radio Beograd 2)
Sudbina naše domaće opere kao nejakog pastorka zvanične muzičke scene potvrdila se na BELEF-u još jednom: nova eksperimentalna opera mladog reditelja Bojana Đorđeva dospela je na festival ne u okviru muzičkog, već pozorišnog programa. Taj podatak, naravno, nije uticao na ovaj multimedijalni projekat koji je zamišljen i ostvaren kao eksperiment, konceptualno-teorijsko delo, i, naravno, kao umetničko delo. Pripadnik grupe “Teorija koja hoda”, za koju je teorijsko estetička eksplikacija uslov da se jedan artefakt ili akcija nazove umetničkim, Bojan Đorđev je svoju zamisao od početka vodio teorijski samosvesno. Teorija je, uostalom, postala toliko moćna da je otvoreno ušla u ovo umetničko delo kao njegov prolog pa je opera započela kao teorijska “priča o operi” koju su ispričale muzikološkinje Jelena Novak i Ivana Stamatović. One su rad svog kolege Đorđeva objasnile sa stanovišta Vitgenštajnove teorije o jezičkim igrama i sa stanovišta teorije roda, odnosno, ženskog glasa na operskoj sceni. I – “Opera je ženskog roda” je mogla da počne.
Bojan Đorđev je svoju operu zamislio u tri celine čiji su autori različiti: obnovio je i proglasio je operskom, kompoziciju Gorana Kapetanovića “Mala Sirena” iz 1994. godine, poručio novu kompoziciju koja se može nazvati i operom od Anje Đorđević, pa celu trilogiju završio vokalnim I kinetičkim performansom kompozitorke iz Irske Dženifer Volš. Takva koncepcija celine iz nekompatibilnih delova već upućuje na autoreferentan stav Đorđeva o onome što radi i, na kraju, na njegovo mišljenje o tome šta je opera danas i ovde. Takav ironijski stav naglašen je novim i, ako hoćete, eksperimentalnim gezamtkunstverkom koji je Đorđev osmislio: nema scene, glume, često ni tradicionalnih akustičkih instrumenata, a ponekad ni muzike, kostim je uglavnom nevažan, libreto ili ne postoji ili je predimenzioniran i raspričan, nema čak ni naracije kao takve. Ali, zato ima live-slikanja I live-pisanja, viodeo-kamera, platna, montaže, svetla, kompjutera, jednom rečju – simultanog dejstva polimedija. Opera se, na neki duhovit i jedinstven način, i interpretira i imitira, odnosno, odvija se “in real time”, ali se prati posredovano, na velikim ekranima koji su namenjeni gledaocima u amfitatru. Pravo zbivanje-izvođenje dešava se izvan scene, snima se kamerama i, live-montažom emituje na ekran in real time. Uz taj, emituju se i drugi, ranije napravljeni snimci tako da je vizuelna komponenta opere veoma raskošna I atraktivna. Bojan Đorđev sebe smatra kustosom ove live-muzičke izložbe u kojoj je njegova izjava da je reč o operi dovoljna da ono što vidimo i čujemo počnemo da čitamo u operskom ključu. A, ako to učinimo, sudarićemo se sa parodijom gezamtkunstverka u kojoj je malo šta u uzročno-posledičnoj vezi, ali je mnogo toga aluzivno ili analogno povezano, često samo nabacano u nekom besmislenom nabrajanju, nagomilano kao atrakcija, senzacija i spektakl. Susrećemo se sa parodijom koja prenaglašava simultanost dejstva raznih umetnosti pretvorivši je u simultanost zbivanja koje se odvija pred gledaocima. Namerno kažem “gledaocima” jer vizuelna strana ovog projekta nadilazi njegov akustički, odnosno, muzički parametar. Muzika se, od Kapetanovićeve “Male sirene”, preko “Oglasa” Anje Đorđević, do performansa Dženifer Volš, sve više povlači i ustupa mesto zvuku kao takvom. Slika sa ekrana nam saopštava da je zvuk koji čujemo baš zvuk opere.
U ovoj operi koja bi htela da bude opera tako se i ponašaju pevajući glasovi: oni zaista pevaju u Kapetanovićevom činu, predimenzionirano operatični, nasglašeno feminini, u kemp-komunikaciji koja klasičnu operu sa njenim konvencijama izvrće ruglu. U činu Anje Đorđević pevajući glas postaje pop-pevački ženski glas, nenametljivo erotizovan. Njena opera se prožima sa masovnom pop-kulturom i putem libreta koji je sačinjen od tekstova malih ljubavnih oglasa. U činu Dženifer Volš ova detronizacija opere kao ritualne forme visoke kulture nastavlja se i dovodi do oksimorona u trenutku kada kompozitorka, brzo pevajući, niže veliki broj sasvim sitnih, ali jasno prepoznatljivih isečaka najpopularnijih pop-pesama. Opera se, na kraju, davi u pop-prosečnosti, barem kada je reč o muzici, i ta njena ritualna smrt je samo to – još jedan gezamtkunstverk ritual sa ukusom cinizma. Sličan put prelaze i libreta: u Kapetanovićevoj “Maloj sireni” teksta, zapravo, i nema, osim dva-tri citata glasa Igora Stravinskog. U “Oglasima” Anje Đorđević zbivanje je pretrpano tekstovima: ona svojim neoperskim, pop-glasom peva tekstove malih oglasa prevedenih na engleski, Vladislava Đorđević čita, opet na engleskom, nešto kao odlomke iz psihoanalitičarskog priručnika, a na jednom od ekrana emituje se snimak u kome njihova saradnica, Dušanka Stojanović, kuca na pisaćoj mašini tekst koji joj tog trenutka padne na pamet u ironičnoj parodiji na čuvene nadrealističke akcije beleženja toka svesti. Dženifer Volš se u svom impresivnom i sugestivnom performansu, oslanja na dokumentarni snimak u kome jedna žena priča o svom ljubavnom životu u mladosti. Naravno, tu su i stupidni tekstovi pop-pesama koji, nadovezani jedan na drugi, ponovo celu komunikaciju govornim jezikom dovode do oksimorona. Dakle, od njenog početka do njenog kraja opera sa naslovom “Opera je ženskog roda” se ironično obračunava sa libretom kao tekstom-jezikom, sa melodijom koja bi trebalo da je njegov eksponent i sa operskim glasom koji tekst izgovara pevajući melodiju koja ga proiznosi. Ako je opera ženskog roda, kako je u svojoj čuvenoj izjavi rekao još Vagner, i ako je pevaju ženski glasovi koji u nju ugrađuju svoje erotizovano telo, kako to tvrdi teorija roda, onda je degradacija opere i žene u ovomeksperimentu Bojana Đorđeva izvedena vedro, samozadovoljno i vešto, čak sa opscenim uživanjem u svemu tome. Sa druge strane, u okviru medijskog gezamtkunstverka, nužno su u prvi plan izbili tehnički gadžeti: mikrofoni, kamere, miksete, projektori, reflektori, reportažna kola, ekrani, kompjuteri. Glavnu ulogu u ostvarenju ove opere nemaju više pevači, već teoretičari, dramaturzi, dizajneri, filmski režiseri, majstori zvuka i svetla, kompjuterski manipulanti. I sve to odvija se u nikad sazidanom amfiteatru zgrade Biološkog instututa, amfiteatru koji je već postao ruševina, iako nikada nije postao zgrada.
Ironija ove analogije ne može biti očiglednija.
Razgovor o/na marginama Operrrre
sa Bojanom Đorđevim razgovarala Ana Vujanović
AV: Bojane, otkud uopšte opera, ovde-i-sad? Koji su tvoji inicijalni razlozi? I kakve su ti namere s Operrrrom...?
BĐ: Operrrra je hibridni projekat koji nastaje na marginama opere, pozorišta, čak i televizije, u jednoj marginalnoj evropskoj kulturi kakva je srpska. Kao što je istorija Balkana isprekidana, bez kontinuiteta, tako se i istorija opere na ovim prostorima bazira na gotovo ekscesnim praizvedbama jednom u deceniji ili možda dve decenije. U poslednjih nekoliko godina sa DreamOperom (TkH i Veličković), Narcisom i Eho (Đorđević), Zorom D (Žebeljan), jednom inscenacijom Nymana i inscenacijama tradicionalnih operskih dela Bojane Cvejić, ta istorija se malo ubrzava. Sva pomenuta dela nastaju kao festivalske produkcije i nemaju svoj repertoarski život - što znači da je i ova Operrrra svojevrsni eksces, i to na više planova. Samim kombinovanjem materijala, relativizuje se autorska pozicija. Samo jedna od tri kompozicije/čina komponovana je specijalno za ovu priliku (ali mišljena kao nezavisni materijal). Zatim, inscenacijom odnosno nedostatkom iste u tradicionalnom smislu te reči, ova opera ili komad muzičkog teatra temeljno preispituje ideju Gesamtkunstwerka u doba medija, pre svega praveći analogiju između Wagnerovog koncepta i muzičkog klipa s MTVa kojem danas potpuno pripada to mesto.
Kao i svaka 'prava' opera, i ova je narudžbina. Sam, nikada ne bih pokrenuo opersku mašineriju, ali ako mi se ponudi prihvatam. Ono što želim da ponudim ovim pozorišnim projektom, koji u svom naslovu ima operu, je mogućnost drugačijeg promišljanja opere danas. Dakle, pre svega jednu proteorijsku tezu kao naslov (Opera je ženskog roda) koja se kasnije izvodi kroz tri čina koja nude tri savremena načina percepcije i rada sa ženskim (operskim) glasom: od preterane fetišizacije (Kapetanović) preko flerta sa autorskim pop glasom (Đorđević) pa do istraživanja izražajnih mogućnosti glasa do potpune destrukcije (Walshe). Ženski glas je ovde pod lupom pre svega kao konstitutivni činilac opere. Dalje, ova predstava, radi sa marginama opere i pozorišta. U njoj se stavljaju u pogon sve mašinerije kao i u bilo kom operskom/teatarskom delu, ali sada su one izložene publici (backstage, pripreme prostora, gotovo pornografski detalji izvođačkog tela koje 'radi'), dok je ono što je tradicionalno izloženo (stage) u ovom slučaju medijski posredovano (ekrani su jedino što publika vidi). Na taj način je i samo uživanje u operi/predstavi/'prisustvu' odloženo. Konačno, ova opera odnosno njena tri čina, pored različitih načina bavljenja ženskim glasom, doprinose i debati o operi kao popularnom ili elitnom žanru. Sve tri kompozicije flertuju s popularnom muzikom - od eksplicitnih referenci na pop pesme kod Walshe, do eklektičkog postmodernog naslojavanja različitih (popularnih) muzičkih žanrova kod Kapetanovića do preuzimanja kantautorskog pop principa kod Đorđevićeve.
AV: Tvoje reference sa pop kulturom su često veoma očigledne u tvojim teatarskim i drugim umetničkim radovima. Zbog čega koristiš termin 'flert' (ili: proceduru flerta), naročito u kontekstu problematike pop kulture? Rad sa pop kulturom je politički i ideološki rad par excellence... A flertovanje je potpuno neproblematizujući pristup; pa me zanima šta ti pokušavaš pomoću njega – sa pop kulturom, odnosno teatrom i operom.
BĐ: Situacija sa pop kulturom u našem kulturnom kontekstu je mnogo kompleksnija nego što na prvi pogled može da izgleda. Kao što si rekla, 'flert' jeste neproblematizujući pristup. Ali, recimo, u našoj sredini 'flert' sa popularnom muzikom u okviru savremene muzike je izrazito transgresivan čin jer ono što je poželjno/proskribovano u dominantnoj struji akademskog kompozitorskog diskursa jeste 'flertovanje'/rad sa etno muzikom. Tako da na makro planu 'flert' sa pop muzikom postaje problematizujući čin par excellence, čak i vrsta političkog i ideološkog statementa. Ono što ja radim sa pop kulturom u svojim projektima (pre svega u projektu Pustinja slike sa Sinišom Ilićem, započetim 2002. u Belgiji) je korišćenje pop slike (image) pre svega kao readymadea preuzetog iz sveprisutne okružujuće (medijske) kulture.
Poznata je teza o smrti opere za čiji tačan datum se kandiduje nekoliko događaja – obično operskih premijera iz prve polovine 20 veka. Svako ko danas komponuje pa i inscenira operu mora se na neki način odrediti u odnosu na tu tezu. Naravno opera je vrlo živahna za jednu pokojnicu i čini se da vodi čak nekoliko zagrobnih života: kao elitna umetnost eksperimenta i istraživanja na connoisseur festivalima savremene opere; kao konstituišući element nacionalnog identiteta moderne evropske države, u državnim i/ili gradskim pozorištima; kao zabava miliona (tri tenora na stadionu, Mercury/Caballet i Barcelona...); i kao industrija zabave preko izdavanja CDa DVDa itd. Tako da je opera danas neminovno deo popularne kulture, što nije daleko ni od njene prošlosti, naročito u 19. veku. Međutim, u ovom radu rad sa pop kulturom/muzikom je pre svega prisutan u muzičkom tekstu i donekle u samoj inscenaciji – korišćenjem tipične tehnologije mas medija (televizijski sistem prenosa, video itd), dok je sam način korišćenja sve osim popularan – nema narativa i mimezisa, 'prisustvo' i živo izvođenje je posredovano, korišćenje dokumentarnih materijala sa proba i transformacije prostora itd.
AV: Govoriš i referiraš, kao i drugi naši saradnici, o smrti opere kao bitnoj odrednici ovog rada. Ali, taj rad je – prema svojoj programskoj (autorskoj) koncepciji, rediteljskoj postavci, mnogim konkretnim rešenjima prostora (nedovršene betonske građevine koja se pretvara u totalnu scenu), lociranja publike, videa, pa i samom spoju tri različite kompozicije u jedinstveno delo – ujedno i pokušaj ponovnog otvaranja mogućnosti za Gesamtkunstwerk, koji je vrhunac opere i njenog totalnog i totalizujućeg univerzuma.
Ta referenca se ne može zaobići, zato bih volela da je objasniš. Naročito jer ovde postoji i jedan problem koji usložnjava pitanje. A to je da je »tvoj Gesamkunstwerk« imanentno nekoherentan, rasparčan iznutra, on neprestano ispušta totalitet koji je 19ovekovni Gesamtkunstwerk hteo da zahvati. Pa i ti se sam postavljaš pre kao vilsonovski reditelj-arhitekta koji u velikoj meri arbitrarno projektuje delo od pojedinačnih elemenata (koji od početka nisu strogo usmereni rediteljskim zahtevima). Molim te da objasniš svoj odnos prema diskursu, formi i ideologiji Gesamtkunstwerka u Operrrri, kao i relacije tog pojma sa pojmom i praksom smrti opere.
BĐ: Već sam napomenuo da se ovo delo bavi marginama pozorišta i opere, pa samim tim i Gesamtkunstwerka. Kao što je i opera – kao projekat firentinske kamerate, osmišljena kao obnova grčke tragedije – u startu osuđena na neuspeh, tako je i Wagnerov Gesamtkunstwerk u startu bio osuđen na neuspeh, jer je povratak na pretpostavljeno jedinstvo muzike scene i reči nemoguć. Još specifičnije, sama realizacija Wagnerovog koncepta nije bila dosledna (i ovde se pozivam na Adolphea Appiju), jer koliko god da su njegove reforme bile radikalne u pogledu odnosa muzika-tekst, muzičke strukture opere, pa čak i scenskog prostora (zgrade), inscenacija je ostala 'neubedljiva' i disproporcionalna 'ozbiljnosti' i 'težini' ostalih reformi. Kao što si rekla, Operrrra (tj. njena inscenacija) preispituje mogućnost Gesamtkunstwerka danas, ali upravo sa svešću o nemogućnosti istog, (i dalje:) oslanjajući se na celokupni 20ovekovni otpor mimezisu, iskustvo ambijentalne i umetnosti instalacije, pa čak i body-arta; (i dalje:) oslanjajući se na (modifikovanu) tehnologiju TV prenosa itd. A svaka od ovih referenci je i sama neka vrsta ideje o Gesamtkunstwerku.
Smrt opere za mene pre svega znači završetak modernističkog napretka i razvoja u operi - slično se može reći i za dramu (postdramski teatar i postopera). To znači da svaka nova opera mora da bude opera o operi, da se odredi prema završenom i zaokruženom modernističkom operskom projektu, prema istorijskim operskim tehnikama i konceptima (kao što je Gesamtkunstwerk, kao što je bell canto, kao što je sukob na liniji muzika-libretto itd). Zato bi moj rediteljski postupak ovde mogao da se nazove i »kustoskim« – pojedinačni činovi i prolog opere su ili naručeni ili 'ponovo otkriveni' (Mala sirena) i re/kontekstualizovani u svetlu centralne niti projekta, a to je ženski glas.
Kada si pomenula reditelja-arhitektu, ne mogu da odolim a da to ne pročitam 'pogrešno' i pomenem sam prostor u kojem se realizuje Operrrra – nedovršenu zgradu Botaničkog instituta Biološkog fakulteta u Botaničkoj bašti. Nedovršena zgrada instituta fakulteta koji ni sam nema zgradu. Eksperimentalna opera u zemlji u kojoj je operska tradicija vrlo slaba i sastoji se iz manje-više jedne praizvedbe na jednu ili čak dve decenije – a pojedinačni (na početku teksta) pomenuti 'iskoraci' u novom tretmanu opere se PO PRAVILU dešavaju izvan čak dve operske kuće u gradu, dok zgrada opere (kakva je landmark urbanizma, istorije, kulture i nacionalnog/državnog identiteta svake evropske prestonice) ne postoji. Dakle, cela situacija opere u botaničkoj bašti podseća na građenje zgrade opere u Amazoniji iz Herzogovog filma Fitzcarraldo.
AV: Da, zato i smatram da je ovaj razgovor, u kojem precizno određuješ svoje autorske pozicije, važan. Jer, kao i često do sad, ti ovim radom ovde-i-sada deluješ na prebrisanom prostoru u kojem promiču gotovo samo neubedljive senke tragova. Dakle, sam kontekst te ne obavezuje; ti ne podnosiš težak teret tradicije, niti očekivanja. A priori ti je data (nepodnošljiva) sloboda samo-odgovornosti; odgovornosti koja je na tebi i tvojim konceptualizacijama i kontekstualizacijama rada, koje će biti i okidač za istoriju.
Zato bih za kraj da specifičnije odrediš svoje viđenje političnosti Operrrre, njenih procedura i diskursa. S obzirom na zamisao i strukturu samog rada, predlažem da razmišljaš u liniji u kojoj Jacques Rancier govori o političkoj umetnosti kao prelasku koji briše i/ili preraspoređuje granice između visoke i popularne umetnosti, umetničkih disciplina, različitih oblasti društvenih praksi, kao i umetnosti i života, a za razliku od taktike post-modernističkog spajanja ili konfrontiranja pojava i praksi iz različitih režima čije granice ostaju netaknute. Koja ti je pozicija bliža? ...Ja težim čvršćim materijalnim uokvirenjima praksi, upravo radi pokazivanja tih uokvirenja kao pripadnih domenu socijalnih kompetencija i mandata, pa imam ambivalentan odnos prema tvom fluktuiranju kroz režime visoke umetnosti-pop kulture, teatra-opere-performansa, uživalačke umetnosti-profeminističke akcije, gotovog dela-projektovane društvene situacije... Stoga je ovo pitanje, kao i referenca na Ranciera (Politics of Aesthetics), usmereno na podršku tvojoj artikulaciji sopstvene koncepcije i suočenja s odgovornošću koju za nju preuzimaš.
BĐ: Već nekoliko puta sam pomenuo margine/granice – bilo da se to odnosi na granice dva (ili više) medija bilo dva registra umetnosti (elitne i popularne). Ono što me najviše rukovodi u radu u izvođačkim umetnostima jeste upravo pitanje granica i promena/redefinisanje/pomeranje statusa umetničkog dela (ili čak zamenom samog pojma 'delo' pojmom 'rad'). U vitgenštajnovskom smislu, smatram da svaki novi projekat mora da postavi 'nova pravila igre' (shvaćene kao game, ne kao ludus!) i u tom smislu menja, proširuje ili sužava granice medija. Ono što mene interesuje je pre svega političnost forme (kojom se menja vladajuća paradigma), a opera (ili Operrrra) formulisana kao (unapred neuspeli) pokušaj Gesamtkunstwerka je idealno polje za preispitivanje granica i njihove čvrstine/propustljivosti/promenljivosti.
U pravu si kada kažeš da se Operrrra razvija i nastaje na brisanom prostoru. Međutim, operski projekti koje sam pomenuo kao ekscese ipak stvaraju neki referentni sistem. A kad su reference iz inostranstva u pitanju, Operrrra se čvrsto oslanja na pojavu 'opere u doba medija' (J. Novak) i autore kao što su Wilson/Glass, Greenaway/Andriessen, Reich idr. Oni svakim svojim radom daju odgovor na pitanje o smrti opere odnosno njenoj novoj reinkarnaciji/rekombinaciji konstitutivnih elemenata (radikalnim redefinisanjem izvođačkog sastava, izborom libreta, ukidanjem inscenacije uvođenjem videa itd.), a u odnosu na promene u buržoaskom društvu poznog kapitalizma. Ako krenemo od teze da je opera kao žanr vrhunski umetnički domet zapadne (evropske) civilizacije i da bismo hipotetičkom antropologu sa Marsa najbolje objasnili evropsko društvo posetom operi, onda sve što se dešava u operi u smislu promene paradigme žanra jeste politički čin par excellence.
Ovim projektom se na neki način pravi hommage baroknom operskom pozorištu mašina, ona jeste poligon za ispitivanje 'izvedbenosti' onih činilaca scene koji nisu ljudsko telo. U ovoj operi, pored muzičara i pevača, 'izvodi' i sam ambijent, izvodi i televizijska tehnologija, ali izvode i oni konstitutivne funkcije bilo kog teatarskog projekta za koje izvođenje nije tipično: reditelj, dramaturškinja, muzikološkinje, vizuelni umetnik/dizajner, filmska rediteljka, dizajner zvuka. Dakle ovo je pozorište bez glumaca, ovo je opera bez scene (i dalje: bez mimezisa, bez narativa, bez literarne povezanosti između prologa i sva tri čina, itd), ovaj arbitrarno sastavljeni mehanizam pokreće 'margine' svakog pozorišnog projekta i njih stavlja u pogon i to je upravo njegova političnost.
AV: Bojane, otkud uopšte opera, ovde-i-sad? Koji su tvoji inicijalni razlozi? I kakve su ti namere s Operrrrom...?
BĐ: Operrrra je hibridni projekat koji nastaje na marginama opere, pozorišta, čak i televizije, u jednoj marginalnoj evropskoj kulturi kakva je srpska. Kao što je istorija Balkana isprekidana, bez kontinuiteta, tako se i istorija opere na ovim prostorima bazira na gotovo ekscesnim praizvedbama jednom u deceniji ili možda dve decenije. U poslednjih nekoliko godina sa DreamOperom (TkH i Veličković), Narcisom i Eho (Đorđević), Zorom D (Žebeljan), jednom inscenacijom Nymana i inscenacijama tradicionalnih operskih dela Bojane Cvejić, ta istorija se malo ubrzava. Sva pomenuta dela nastaju kao festivalske produkcije i nemaju svoj repertoarski život - što znači da je i ova Operrrra svojevrsni eksces, i to na više planova. Samim kombinovanjem materijala, relativizuje se autorska pozicija. Samo jedna od tri kompozicije/čina komponovana je specijalno za ovu priliku (ali mišljena kao nezavisni materijal). Zatim, inscenacijom odnosno nedostatkom iste u tradicionalnom smislu te reči, ova opera ili komad muzičkog teatra temeljno preispituje ideju Gesamtkunstwerka u doba medija, pre svega praveći analogiju između Wagnerovog koncepta i muzičkog klipa s MTVa kojem danas potpuno pripada to mesto.
Kao i svaka 'prava' opera, i ova je narudžbina. Sam, nikada ne bih pokrenuo opersku mašineriju, ali ako mi se ponudi prihvatam. Ono što želim da ponudim ovim pozorišnim projektom, koji u svom naslovu ima operu, je mogućnost drugačijeg promišljanja opere danas. Dakle, pre svega jednu proteorijsku tezu kao naslov (Opera je ženskog roda) koja se kasnije izvodi kroz tri čina koja nude tri savremena načina percepcije i rada sa ženskim (operskim) glasom: od preterane fetišizacije (Kapetanović) preko flerta sa autorskim pop glasom (Đorđević) pa do istraživanja izražajnih mogućnosti glasa do potpune destrukcije (Walshe). Ženski glas je ovde pod lupom pre svega kao konstitutivni činilac opere. Dalje, ova predstava, radi sa marginama opere i pozorišta. U njoj se stavljaju u pogon sve mašinerije kao i u bilo kom operskom/teatarskom delu, ali sada su one izložene publici (backstage, pripreme prostora, gotovo pornografski detalji izvođačkog tela koje 'radi'), dok je ono što je tradicionalno izloženo (stage) u ovom slučaju medijski posredovano (ekrani su jedino što publika vidi). Na taj način je i samo uživanje u operi/predstavi/'prisustvu' odloženo. Konačno, ova opera odnosno njena tri čina, pored različitih načina bavljenja ženskim glasom, doprinose i debati o operi kao popularnom ili elitnom žanru. Sve tri kompozicije flertuju s popularnom muzikom - od eksplicitnih referenci na pop pesme kod Walshe, do eklektičkog postmodernog naslojavanja različitih (popularnih) muzičkih žanrova kod Kapetanovića do preuzimanja kantautorskog pop principa kod Đorđevićeve.
AV: Tvoje reference sa pop kulturom su često veoma očigledne u tvojim teatarskim i drugim umetničkim radovima. Zbog čega koristiš termin 'flert' (ili: proceduru flerta), naročito u kontekstu problematike pop kulture? Rad sa pop kulturom je politički i ideološki rad par excellence... A flertovanje je potpuno neproblematizujući pristup; pa me zanima šta ti pokušavaš pomoću njega – sa pop kulturom, odnosno teatrom i operom.
BĐ: Situacija sa pop kulturom u našem kulturnom kontekstu je mnogo kompleksnija nego što na prvi pogled može da izgleda. Kao što si rekla, 'flert' jeste neproblematizujući pristup. Ali, recimo, u našoj sredini 'flert' sa popularnom muzikom u okviru savremene muzike je izrazito transgresivan čin jer ono što je poželjno/proskribovano u dominantnoj struji akademskog kompozitorskog diskursa jeste 'flertovanje'/rad sa etno muzikom. Tako da na makro planu 'flert' sa pop muzikom postaje problematizujući čin par excellence, čak i vrsta političkog i ideološkog statementa. Ono što ja radim sa pop kulturom u svojim projektima (pre svega u projektu Pustinja slike sa Sinišom Ilićem, započetim 2002. u Belgiji) je korišćenje pop slike (image) pre svega kao readymadea preuzetog iz sveprisutne okružujuće (medijske) kulture.
Poznata je teza o smrti opere za čiji tačan datum se kandiduje nekoliko događaja – obično operskih premijera iz prve polovine 20 veka. Svako ko danas komponuje pa i inscenira operu mora se na neki način odrediti u odnosu na tu tezu. Naravno opera je vrlo živahna za jednu pokojnicu i čini se da vodi čak nekoliko zagrobnih života: kao elitna umetnost eksperimenta i istraživanja na connoisseur festivalima savremene opere; kao konstituišući element nacionalnog identiteta moderne evropske države, u državnim i/ili gradskim pozorištima; kao zabava miliona (tri tenora na stadionu, Mercury/Caballet i Barcelona...); i kao industrija zabave preko izdavanja CDa DVDa itd. Tako da je opera danas neminovno deo popularne kulture, što nije daleko ni od njene prošlosti, naročito u 19. veku. Međutim, u ovom radu rad sa pop kulturom/muzikom je pre svega prisutan u muzičkom tekstu i donekle u samoj inscenaciji – korišćenjem tipične tehnologije mas medija (televizijski sistem prenosa, video itd), dok je sam način korišćenja sve osim popularan – nema narativa i mimezisa, 'prisustvo' i živo izvođenje je posredovano, korišćenje dokumentarnih materijala sa proba i transformacije prostora itd.
AV: Govoriš i referiraš, kao i drugi naši saradnici, o smrti opere kao bitnoj odrednici ovog rada. Ali, taj rad je – prema svojoj programskoj (autorskoj) koncepciji, rediteljskoj postavci, mnogim konkretnim rešenjima prostora (nedovršene betonske građevine koja se pretvara u totalnu scenu), lociranja publike, videa, pa i samom spoju tri različite kompozicije u jedinstveno delo – ujedno i pokušaj ponovnog otvaranja mogućnosti za Gesamtkunstwerk, koji je vrhunac opere i njenog totalnog i totalizujućeg univerzuma.
Ta referenca se ne može zaobići, zato bih volela da je objasniš. Naročito jer ovde postoji i jedan problem koji usložnjava pitanje. A to je da je »tvoj Gesamkunstwerk« imanentno nekoherentan, rasparčan iznutra, on neprestano ispušta totalitet koji je 19ovekovni Gesamtkunstwerk hteo da zahvati. Pa i ti se sam postavljaš pre kao vilsonovski reditelj-arhitekta koji u velikoj meri arbitrarno projektuje delo od pojedinačnih elemenata (koji od početka nisu strogo usmereni rediteljskim zahtevima). Molim te da objasniš svoj odnos prema diskursu, formi i ideologiji Gesamtkunstwerka u Operrrri, kao i relacije tog pojma sa pojmom i praksom smrti opere.
BĐ: Već sam napomenuo da se ovo delo bavi marginama pozorišta i opere, pa samim tim i Gesamtkunstwerka. Kao što je i opera – kao projekat firentinske kamerate, osmišljena kao obnova grčke tragedije – u startu osuđena na neuspeh, tako je i Wagnerov Gesamtkunstwerk u startu bio osuđen na neuspeh, jer je povratak na pretpostavljeno jedinstvo muzike scene i reči nemoguć. Još specifičnije, sama realizacija Wagnerovog koncepta nije bila dosledna (i ovde se pozivam na Adolphea Appiju), jer koliko god da su njegove reforme bile radikalne u pogledu odnosa muzika-tekst, muzičke strukture opere, pa čak i scenskog prostora (zgrade), inscenacija je ostala 'neubedljiva' i disproporcionalna 'ozbiljnosti' i 'težini' ostalih reformi. Kao što si rekla, Operrrra (tj. njena inscenacija) preispituje mogućnost Gesamtkunstwerka danas, ali upravo sa svešću o nemogućnosti istog, (i dalje:) oslanjajući se na celokupni 20ovekovni otpor mimezisu, iskustvo ambijentalne i umetnosti instalacije, pa čak i body-arta; (i dalje:) oslanjajući se na (modifikovanu) tehnologiju TV prenosa itd. A svaka od ovih referenci je i sama neka vrsta ideje o Gesamtkunstwerku.
Smrt opere za mene pre svega znači završetak modernističkog napretka i razvoja u operi - slično se može reći i za dramu (postdramski teatar i postopera). To znači da svaka nova opera mora da bude opera o operi, da se odredi prema završenom i zaokruženom modernističkom operskom projektu, prema istorijskim operskim tehnikama i konceptima (kao što je Gesamtkunstwerk, kao što je bell canto, kao što je sukob na liniji muzika-libretto itd). Zato bi moj rediteljski postupak ovde mogao da se nazove i »kustoskim« – pojedinačni činovi i prolog opere su ili naručeni ili 'ponovo otkriveni' (Mala sirena) i re/kontekstualizovani u svetlu centralne niti projekta, a to je ženski glas.
Kada si pomenula reditelja-arhitektu, ne mogu da odolim a da to ne pročitam 'pogrešno' i pomenem sam prostor u kojem se realizuje Operrrra – nedovršenu zgradu Botaničkog instituta Biološkog fakulteta u Botaničkoj bašti. Nedovršena zgrada instituta fakulteta koji ni sam nema zgradu. Eksperimentalna opera u zemlji u kojoj je operska tradicija vrlo slaba i sastoji se iz manje-više jedne praizvedbe na jednu ili čak dve decenije – a pojedinačni (na početku teksta) pomenuti 'iskoraci' u novom tretmanu opere se PO PRAVILU dešavaju izvan čak dve operske kuće u gradu, dok zgrada opere (kakva je landmark urbanizma, istorije, kulture i nacionalnog/državnog identiteta svake evropske prestonice) ne postoji. Dakle, cela situacija opere u botaničkoj bašti podseća na građenje zgrade opere u Amazoniji iz Herzogovog filma Fitzcarraldo.
AV: Da, zato i smatram da je ovaj razgovor, u kojem precizno određuješ svoje autorske pozicije, važan. Jer, kao i često do sad, ti ovim radom ovde-i-sada deluješ na prebrisanom prostoru u kojem promiču gotovo samo neubedljive senke tragova. Dakle, sam kontekst te ne obavezuje; ti ne podnosiš težak teret tradicije, niti očekivanja. A priori ti je data (nepodnošljiva) sloboda samo-odgovornosti; odgovornosti koja je na tebi i tvojim konceptualizacijama i kontekstualizacijama rada, koje će biti i okidač za istoriju.
Zato bih za kraj da specifičnije odrediš svoje viđenje političnosti Operrrre, njenih procedura i diskursa. S obzirom na zamisao i strukturu samog rada, predlažem da razmišljaš u liniji u kojoj Jacques Rancier govori o političkoj umetnosti kao prelasku koji briše i/ili preraspoređuje granice između visoke i popularne umetnosti, umetničkih disciplina, različitih oblasti društvenih praksi, kao i umetnosti i života, a za razliku od taktike post-modernističkog spajanja ili konfrontiranja pojava i praksi iz različitih režima čije granice ostaju netaknute. Koja ti je pozicija bliža? ...Ja težim čvršćim materijalnim uokvirenjima praksi, upravo radi pokazivanja tih uokvirenja kao pripadnih domenu socijalnih kompetencija i mandata, pa imam ambivalentan odnos prema tvom fluktuiranju kroz režime visoke umetnosti-pop kulture, teatra-opere-performansa, uživalačke umetnosti-profeminističke akcije, gotovog dela-projektovane društvene situacije... Stoga je ovo pitanje, kao i referenca na Ranciera (Politics of Aesthetics), usmereno na podršku tvojoj artikulaciji sopstvene koncepcije i suočenja s odgovornošću koju za nju preuzimaš.
BĐ: Već nekoliko puta sam pomenuo margine/granice – bilo da se to odnosi na granice dva (ili više) medija bilo dva registra umetnosti (elitne i popularne). Ono što me najviše rukovodi u radu u izvođačkim umetnostima jeste upravo pitanje granica i promena/redefinisanje/pomeranje statusa umetničkog dela (ili čak zamenom samog pojma 'delo' pojmom 'rad'). U vitgenštajnovskom smislu, smatram da svaki novi projekat mora da postavi 'nova pravila igre' (shvaćene kao game, ne kao ludus!) i u tom smislu menja, proširuje ili sužava granice medija. Ono što mene interesuje je pre svega političnost forme (kojom se menja vladajuća paradigma), a opera (ili Operrrra) formulisana kao (unapred neuspeli) pokušaj Gesamtkunstwerka je idealno polje za preispitivanje granica i njihove čvrstine/propustljivosti/promenljivosti.
U pravu si kada kažeš da se Operrrra razvija i nastaje na brisanom prostoru. Međutim, operski projekti koje sam pomenuo kao ekscese ipak stvaraju neki referentni sistem. A kad su reference iz inostranstva u pitanju, Operrrra se čvrsto oslanja na pojavu 'opere u doba medija' (J. Novak) i autore kao što su Wilson/Glass, Greenaway/Andriessen, Reich idr. Oni svakim svojim radom daju odgovor na pitanje o smrti opere odnosno njenoj novoj reinkarnaciji/rekombinaciji konstitutivnih elemenata (radikalnim redefinisanjem izvođačkog sastava, izborom libreta, ukidanjem inscenacije uvođenjem videa itd.), a u odnosu na promene u buržoaskom društvu poznog kapitalizma. Ako krenemo od teze da je opera kao žanr vrhunski umetnički domet zapadne (evropske) civilizacije i da bismo hipotetičkom antropologu sa Marsa najbolje objasnili evropsko društvo posetom operi, onda sve što se dešava u operi u smislu promene paradigme žanra jeste politički čin par excellence.
Ovim projektom se na neki način pravi hommage baroknom operskom pozorištu mašina, ona jeste poligon za ispitivanje 'izvedbenosti' onih činilaca scene koji nisu ljudsko telo. U ovoj operi, pored muzičara i pevača, 'izvodi' i sam ambijent, izvodi i televizijska tehnologija, ali izvode i oni konstitutivne funkcije bilo kog teatarskog projekta za koje izvođenje nije tipično: reditelj, dramaturškinja, muzikološkinje, vizuelni umetnik/dizajner, filmska rediteljka, dizajner zvuka. Dakle ovo je pozorište bez glumaca, ovo je opera bez scene (i dalje: bez mimezisa, bez narativa, bez literarne povezanosti između prologa i sva tri čina, itd), ovaj arbitrarno sastavljeni mehanizam pokreće 'margine' svakog pozorišnog projekta i njih stavlja u pogon i to je upravo njegova političnost.
The Autopsy of the Oper(rrr)a
Ivana Stamatović
A little bit more than 150 years ago Richard Wagner identified (operatic) music with a female body: Music is a woman… She is a siren, which without a soul floats on the waves of her see until man’s love gives her a soul. Today, when we set equivalences between femininity and opera, we don’t do that, it goes without saying, on the level of female/operatic body’s ‘biology’, but ‘beyond’ it. We talk about the relatedness between the ways in which a woman on opera stage and opera itself were conceptualized in surrounding dominant cultures. Because, opera – as well as a woman – does not exist! We know that opera hasn’t got a soul, but that she represents a construct and fiction which truly floats at sees of aesthetic-artistic unintentional or intentional historic encounters; that opera is an object of love and hate and a subject to multiple resurrections and funerals, fetishism and destruction, but, at the same time, an object which, conventionally speaking, is essential. What is, than, the mutual impossible female/operatic history?
In the first authentic opera Monteverdi’s Orpheus turned and, because of the one impatient and premature look, lost his adoring woman forever. In that moment he incautiously and, seems like, equally irretrievably emptied the site of an opera devotee’s desire. In that way, the impossible history of a woman in opera began: bodyless soul of the invisible and ungraspable Euridice – mediated by the female voice on opera stage – wandered the whirlpools of opera metaphysics and, inscribing and reinscribing the trace of the Other’s desire in them, evaded the embodyment of the listeners/viewers’ jouissance. For the reason that, if Adorno was right when he said that all opera is Orpheus, then – at least for about three centuries after the creation of this Monteverdi’s work – all women on stage have been, in a sense, Euridice: projection of the Other, at the same time an object of desire and object of fear, (pre)determined by the indisputable higher (heavenly) order.
A little bit less than three hundred years later, Bizet’s Hose reached the edge of patience with witch the mortal human being can wait on love to come about and, determined to destroy that unreachable female – more than the female herself – for which he strongly yearned for a long time, took the beloved Carmen’s life with the knife blade. However, as soon as the first drop of flaming blood from the Carmen’s ripped body – under the stage lights and in front of all penguins in uniforms – disappeared in the boards of Opéra-Comique (what an irony!), it was clear that Hose’s intention was frustrated from the very beginning: his target became even more dangerous. Carmen’s dead body – like a material evidence of the woman’s impossible presence on stage, from that time on forever literally nailed to the boards of the opera house – and her last piercing scream – like an undestroyable medium of her body, since than inerasably inscribed in operatic discourse – decisively announced the sunrise of a new postmetaphysical operatic (but not only operatic) age without God; age in which the interaction of souls brought about by voice is replaced by interaction… within a flux of forces that determine and dissolve bodies; age which is not founded on the invisible soul and its myths, but the subject’s embodiment of its most basic, forceful drives. In that way, on the music stage finally culminated love returned to nature, as Nietzsche shouted deliriously. That kind of love, after it had been liberated from the initial veil of sentimentality, transcendence and mythology, stirred up sweet juices of passion in the living empirical bodies both in opera and in the body of the opera itself.
Euridice, clearly, was not the first (empirical) woman on the boards of the opera theatre, same as Carmen was not the last, but these two heroines, nevertheless, in the best way symbolize two extreme ontological moments connected to the biography of the woman on opera stage: birth and death. That is to say, that Monteverdi’s heroin was the first (and only) women which was supposed to be given a gift of (new) life on the stage itself. Orpheus cheered up underground gods with his music, although – it will turn out – not that he would bring back his loving woman for real: Euridice was brought to life only to take the sacrifice of his weakness. Having done so, she was constituted as the missing element around which the ideal of the comforting order of the unified world was built.
Bizet’s Carmen, on the other hand, was the first (but not the only) woman whose life was taken under the spotlights. Hose stabbed Carmen’s body with the knife, because his stake was to high: ruptured between many centuries burden of the idealistic promise and the defeating discovery of the inability of its fulfillment, Hose literally and brutally cut into the organism of his betrayed yearning. Carmen’s body was left to lie on the sqaure in Seville, on the mercy of the most diverse. Moral loudspeakers quickly immersed it in the formaldehyde solution and saved it as a relic of the great tradition. On the other hand, greedy lustful personas continued to cut it in pieces until it was reduced to fragments and traces of the former great female seducer. Post festum, it looks like Euridice was expelled from the ‘real’ opera world and pushed into its metaphysics so that later she could reincarnate in the sinful Carmen, then die again and be reborn in some other body or, even, a part of the body… And again, and again.
If we would, instead of the two female protagonists, for the lead role of this story name opera itself, than we would get one of the most provocative biographies of this genre. Because, between the fate of a woman on opera stage and the fate of opera there is an interesting parallel, we could say, even, equivalence. On one hand, in spite of the certainty of its historical beginning in the circle of the Florentin renaissance intellectuals, opera’s ‘birth’ was – similar to Euridice’s return from the underworld - burdened by her uncertain and ungrateful service to metaphysics: a (new) life was given to opera with the hope that the most important classical dramatic form will be reincarnated in it. Consequently, the history of opera – or, more precisely, of its ‘first’ life – is an impossible history of the regeneration of the unreachable and completely unrepresentable ideal of Greek tragedy; ideal which has – always evading the embodyment (would it, in spite of the term’s unrefinedness, be more correct to say ‘theatralizing’) – been leaving its unsure and seductive traces in numerous musical and theatrical rethinkings of the relations between the operatic texts, with the view of reaching the one, unified and coherent artwork. On the other hand, that kind of opera has been ‘murdered’ under the stage lights more than once, but it is neither possible nor necessary to determine the moment of its ‘death’ precisely. Puccini’s Turandot, Schöenberg’s Erwartung, Berg’s Lulu, Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, Cage’s Europeras… These and other works have been, in different occasions in the 20th century philosophy of opera, identified as the ones with which the death of the ‘traditional’ opera has been proclaimed. The blade of their knife penetrated several vital parts of the great operatic history: logic of operatic narration, mimetic relationship between music on one side, and words and scenic view on the other, synthesis of opera’s constitutive arts, the boundaries of its media and, finally, its performtive and perceptive potentials; in other words, the opera’s body itself, which was – like Carmen’s – tortured with many centuries long wish for the Other. Similarly to the (empirical) female body as its own conditio sine qua non, the operatic body has had two fates after each of its ‘deaths’. It has been either carefully conserved – in service to the constant human need for the art which can never be irrational enough – or cold-bloodedly, insensitively and perversely enjoyably dissected, dissolved, destroyed and deconstructed, so that after it would – fortunately for the music theatre – keep coming back even stronger, as the ghostly appearance, in new and different contexts.
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One more theoretical and empirical vampire-like revival of female/operatic body is presented with the theatre work Operrrra (is feminine). However, Operrrra’s opera-like feature is not obvious and direct. It is established on a metalevel by means of fourway director-composers authorial dispute with all of the opera’s vital points mentioned above. In that way, through director’s decision alone, three mutually very diverse composers’ achievements have been extracted from the institutional boundaries of musical practice and placed in the theatrically conducted interrelation. It is based on the web of discontinuities: each act is written by a different author and each is differently scored and performed by distinct performers; each act has its own scenic realization and, in the most general way, theme. That web was functionalized as Operrrra’s theoretical and practical platform for mapping the discursive space and potential of the voice in the reincarnated heterogeneous opera-like/opera/female bodies and traces of those bodies. For, people who have as little reason to sing [on the scene], as they have opportunity are operatic differentia specifica in the comparison to other drama and music-theatrical genres. If the voice on stage, on the top of everything, is female and high, then the opera-like feature of the opera is guaranteed: the coloratura is no mere form of outward exaggeration, but precisely in it the idea of opera emerges most purely as an extreme.
Female voice on opera stage is the fascinating ambivalent element that arouses in the listener a potent experience of a metaphysics as well as of a physics, of an immaterial as well as of a material world. Truly, the voice has been a medium of (Euridice’s) soul and, at the same time, a medium of the (Carmen’s) body; the cause of one’s unquenchable yearning and also one’s fears; a centering of the vocal game of desire, jouissance and unconditional surrender to a phantasmagoric fascination that is always doomed to failure. The voice is a mediator between the interior and the exterior of the body: from a complex interrelation between the anatomy and socialization of the female body and, consequently, the anatomy and socialization of the female voice, numerous myths of vocal (feminine) gender emerged. They include concepts such as nature, materiality, emotions and irrationality. Finally, as the phenomenon most directly associated with the body, the voice also connotes female sexuality: like the body, from which it emanates, the female voice is considered both a signifier of sexual otherness and a source of sexual power.
Therefore, woman’s singing on stage is not only – as Adorno said – the language of passion and an expression that nature prevails in man against all convention and mediation. It is the passion itself, genuine, pure, disarming and arming. While singing, the female body is more active than while speaking; it searches for and encourages the activity of other (scenic or listening/gazing) bodies in action. Consequently, the singing voice has a power to speak to the audience both through the opera’s musical and literary text and ‘beyond’ them. Among many different ways in which opera can do so, Operrrra directly and critically refers to three. Firstly, the voice of a woman on stage can autonomize itself from verbal meanings of the text sung and it can transform itself into vocal object radically purified from all signifying elements; it can – like Lacanian object /a/ – manipulate listeners’ desire while uncovering mechanisms of its work. Secondly, the female voice has an opportunity to redefine the problem of authorial subject of the music sung; identifying itself with a desire of the woman herself, it can renounce masculinistic mimesis of female speech and come closer to the musical (performing) écriture féminine. Thirdly, the female voice has a power of selfreflexion within an extension of or opening the parts of the operatic body towards popular culture.
Lively and resonant body is a ‘natural’ source of those powers of the female voice on opera stage. It is not any body, but a very distinctive one. For, in spite of exclusive status of the vocal operatic medium, in opera productions almost equal attention is payed to the spectacularization of the body; on the stage there is a woman: her ‘inner self’ is uncovered through her voice and her ‘external self’ is usually lighted and emphasized by means of scenographic and costimographic effects. In that way, actually, representation of a woman in opera unfolds within double layered, acoustic-visual field. It is constituted through intersection, mutual permeating and opposition of the relation ear-listening-female voice and ear-gaze-female body; in other words, by way of permanent and unpredictable oscillation between position subject-object both on the stage and off of it.
Disregarding the way the dynamics within individual listening and gazing contexts as well as between them is established, a woman – in the utmost case – appears on stage for the Other; he paid so that he could, hidden in darkness of the hall, secretly enjoy the outcomes of the empirical female and constructed operatic body. But, what happens if that relationship in opera is set vice versa? More concretely, what are the consequences on the ‘protocols of jouissance’ in the Operrrra’s opera-like features when the light form the stage spotlights the audience? When the guarantee of a visual unrepresentability is revoked from the opera devotees? When the desired female body on stage dissolves simultaneously with the operatic body? When the cold surface of the screen offers a fragment of a woman? Her shadow? Reflection? Trace? Could women be regarded as opera’s jewels then, as Catherine Clément wrote a long time ago? Do the powers of the female voice change in those conditions and in what way? Whose medium is that voice and whom does it speak to? Has it got a listener at all or do we submit to it with hope of reaching metaphysics on its wings, metaphysics from which we began the autopsy of the Oper(rrr)a? Or, in other words – to paraphrase Adorno at the end – the female operatic voice itself can never be irrational enough so that we could renounce it, and in spite of that renunciation, save our soul?
* This text was written in a form of a latent dialog with writers whose texts have – in higher or lesser degree, affirmatively or negatively – influenced theoretical, aesthetic and philosophical grounds of the project Operrrra (is feminine): with Carolyn Abbate, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, Catherine Clément, Mladen Dolar, Jacques Lacan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Poizat, Kaja Silverman, Miško Šuvaković, Gary Tomlinson, Slavoj Žižek and Richard Wagner. Quotations form their works and key concepts of their theories, which were used in this text, are typed in italics.
A little bit more than 150 years ago Richard Wagner identified (operatic) music with a female body: Music is a woman… She is a siren, which without a soul floats on the waves of her see until man’s love gives her a soul. Today, when we set equivalences between femininity and opera, we don’t do that, it goes without saying, on the level of female/operatic body’s ‘biology’, but ‘beyond’ it. We talk about the relatedness between the ways in which a woman on opera stage and opera itself were conceptualized in surrounding dominant cultures. Because, opera – as well as a woman – does not exist! We know that opera hasn’t got a soul, but that she represents a construct and fiction which truly floats at sees of aesthetic-artistic unintentional or intentional historic encounters; that opera is an object of love and hate and a subject to multiple resurrections and funerals, fetishism and destruction, but, at the same time, an object which, conventionally speaking, is essential. What is, than, the mutual impossible female/operatic history?
In the first authentic opera Monteverdi’s Orpheus turned and, because of the one impatient and premature look, lost his adoring woman forever. In that moment he incautiously and, seems like, equally irretrievably emptied the site of an opera devotee’s desire. In that way, the impossible history of a woman in opera began: bodyless soul of the invisible and ungraspable Euridice – mediated by the female voice on opera stage – wandered the whirlpools of opera metaphysics and, inscribing and reinscribing the trace of the Other’s desire in them, evaded the embodyment of the listeners/viewers’ jouissance. For the reason that, if Adorno was right when he said that all opera is Orpheus, then – at least for about three centuries after the creation of this Monteverdi’s work – all women on stage have been, in a sense, Euridice: projection of the Other, at the same time an object of desire and object of fear, (pre)determined by the indisputable higher (heavenly) order.
A little bit less than three hundred years later, Bizet’s Hose reached the edge of patience with witch the mortal human being can wait on love to come about and, determined to destroy that unreachable female – more than the female herself – for which he strongly yearned for a long time, took the beloved Carmen’s life with the knife blade. However, as soon as the first drop of flaming blood from the Carmen’s ripped body – under the stage lights and in front of all penguins in uniforms – disappeared in the boards of Opéra-Comique (what an irony!), it was clear that Hose’s intention was frustrated from the very beginning: his target became even more dangerous. Carmen’s dead body – like a material evidence of the woman’s impossible presence on stage, from that time on forever literally nailed to the boards of the opera house – and her last piercing scream – like an undestroyable medium of her body, since than inerasably inscribed in operatic discourse – decisively announced the sunrise of a new postmetaphysical operatic (but not only operatic) age without God; age in which the interaction of souls brought about by voice is replaced by interaction… within a flux of forces that determine and dissolve bodies; age which is not founded on the invisible soul and its myths, but the subject’s embodiment of its most basic, forceful drives. In that way, on the music stage finally culminated love returned to nature, as Nietzsche shouted deliriously. That kind of love, after it had been liberated from the initial veil of sentimentality, transcendence and mythology, stirred up sweet juices of passion in the living empirical bodies both in opera and in the body of the opera itself.
Euridice, clearly, was not the first (empirical) woman on the boards of the opera theatre, same as Carmen was not the last, but these two heroines, nevertheless, in the best way symbolize two extreme ontological moments connected to the biography of the woman on opera stage: birth and death. That is to say, that Monteverdi’s heroin was the first (and only) women which was supposed to be given a gift of (new) life on the stage itself. Orpheus cheered up underground gods with his music, although – it will turn out – not that he would bring back his loving woman for real: Euridice was brought to life only to take the sacrifice of his weakness. Having done so, she was constituted as the missing element around which the ideal of the comforting order of the unified world was built.
Bizet’s Carmen, on the other hand, was the first (but not the only) woman whose life was taken under the spotlights. Hose stabbed Carmen’s body with the knife, because his stake was to high: ruptured between many centuries burden of the idealistic promise and the defeating discovery of the inability of its fulfillment, Hose literally and brutally cut into the organism of his betrayed yearning. Carmen’s body was left to lie on the sqaure in Seville, on the mercy of the most diverse. Moral loudspeakers quickly immersed it in the formaldehyde solution and saved it as a relic of the great tradition. On the other hand, greedy lustful personas continued to cut it in pieces until it was reduced to fragments and traces of the former great female seducer. Post festum, it looks like Euridice was expelled from the ‘real’ opera world and pushed into its metaphysics so that later she could reincarnate in the sinful Carmen, then die again and be reborn in some other body or, even, a part of the body… And again, and again.
If we would, instead of the two female protagonists, for the lead role of this story name opera itself, than we would get one of the most provocative biographies of this genre. Because, between the fate of a woman on opera stage and the fate of opera there is an interesting parallel, we could say, even, equivalence. On one hand, in spite of the certainty of its historical beginning in the circle of the Florentin renaissance intellectuals, opera’s ‘birth’ was – similar to Euridice’s return from the underworld - burdened by her uncertain and ungrateful service to metaphysics: a (new) life was given to opera with the hope that the most important classical dramatic form will be reincarnated in it. Consequently, the history of opera – or, more precisely, of its ‘first’ life – is an impossible history of the regeneration of the unreachable and completely unrepresentable ideal of Greek tragedy; ideal which has – always evading the embodyment (would it, in spite of the term’s unrefinedness, be more correct to say ‘theatralizing’) – been leaving its unsure and seductive traces in numerous musical and theatrical rethinkings of the relations between the operatic texts, with the view of reaching the one, unified and coherent artwork. On the other hand, that kind of opera has been ‘murdered’ under the stage lights more than once, but it is neither possible nor necessary to determine the moment of its ‘death’ precisely. Puccini’s Turandot, Schöenberg’s Erwartung, Berg’s Lulu, Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, Cage’s Europeras… These and other works have been, in different occasions in the 20th century philosophy of opera, identified as the ones with which the death of the ‘traditional’ opera has been proclaimed. The blade of their knife penetrated several vital parts of the great operatic history: logic of operatic narration, mimetic relationship between music on one side, and words and scenic view on the other, synthesis of opera’s constitutive arts, the boundaries of its media and, finally, its performtive and perceptive potentials; in other words, the opera’s body itself, which was – like Carmen’s – tortured with many centuries long wish for the Other. Similarly to the (empirical) female body as its own conditio sine qua non, the operatic body has had two fates after each of its ‘deaths’. It has been either carefully conserved – in service to the constant human need for the art which can never be irrational enough – or cold-bloodedly, insensitively and perversely enjoyably dissected, dissolved, destroyed and deconstructed, so that after it would – fortunately for the music theatre – keep coming back even stronger, as the ghostly appearance, in new and different contexts.
***
One more theoretical and empirical vampire-like revival of female/operatic body is presented with the theatre work Operrrra (is feminine). However, Operrrra’s opera-like feature is not obvious and direct. It is established on a metalevel by means of fourway director-composers authorial dispute with all of the opera’s vital points mentioned above. In that way, through director’s decision alone, three mutually very diverse composers’ achievements have been extracted from the institutional boundaries of musical practice and placed in the theatrically conducted interrelation. It is based on the web of discontinuities: each act is written by a different author and each is differently scored and performed by distinct performers; each act has its own scenic realization and, in the most general way, theme. That web was functionalized as Operrrra’s theoretical and practical platform for mapping the discursive space and potential of the voice in the reincarnated heterogeneous opera-like/opera/female bodies and traces of those bodies. For, people who have as little reason to sing [on the scene], as they have opportunity are operatic differentia specifica in the comparison to other drama and music-theatrical genres. If the voice on stage, on the top of everything, is female and high, then the opera-like feature of the opera is guaranteed: the coloratura is no mere form of outward exaggeration, but precisely in it the idea of opera emerges most purely as an extreme.
Female voice on opera stage is the fascinating ambivalent element that arouses in the listener a potent experience of a metaphysics as well as of a physics, of an immaterial as well as of a material world. Truly, the voice has been a medium of (Euridice’s) soul and, at the same time, a medium of the (Carmen’s) body; the cause of one’s unquenchable yearning and also one’s fears; a centering of the vocal game of desire, jouissance and unconditional surrender to a phantasmagoric fascination that is always doomed to failure. The voice is a mediator between the interior and the exterior of the body: from a complex interrelation between the anatomy and socialization of the female body and, consequently, the anatomy and socialization of the female voice, numerous myths of vocal (feminine) gender emerged. They include concepts such as nature, materiality, emotions and irrationality. Finally, as the phenomenon most directly associated with the body, the voice also connotes female sexuality: like the body, from which it emanates, the female voice is considered both a signifier of sexual otherness and a source of sexual power.
Therefore, woman’s singing on stage is not only – as Adorno said – the language of passion and an expression that nature prevails in man against all convention and mediation. It is the passion itself, genuine, pure, disarming and arming. While singing, the female body is more active than while speaking; it searches for and encourages the activity of other (scenic or listening/gazing) bodies in action. Consequently, the singing voice has a power to speak to the audience both through the opera’s musical and literary text and ‘beyond’ them. Among many different ways in which opera can do so, Operrrra directly and critically refers to three. Firstly, the voice of a woman on stage can autonomize itself from verbal meanings of the text sung and it can transform itself into vocal object radically purified from all signifying elements; it can – like Lacanian object /a/ – manipulate listeners’ desire while uncovering mechanisms of its work. Secondly, the female voice has an opportunity to redefine the problem of authorial subject of the music sung; identifying itself with a desire of the woman herself, it can renounce masculinistic mimesis of female speech and come closer to the musical (performing) écriture féminine. Thirdly, the female voice has a power of selfreflexion within an extension of or opening the parts of the operatic body towards popular culture.
Lively and resonant body is a ‘natural’ source of those powers of the female voice on opera stage. It is not any body, but a very distinctive one. For, in spite of exclusive status of the vocal operatic medium, in opera productions almost equal attention is payed to the spectacularization of the body; on the stage there is a woman: her ‘inner self’ is uncovered through her voice and her ‘external self’ is usually lighted and emphasized by means of scenographic and costimographic effects. In that way, actually, representation of a woman in opera unfolds within double layered, acoustic-visual field. It is constituted through intersection, mutual permeating and opposition of the relation ear-listening-female voice and ear-gaze-female body; in other words, by way of permanent and unpredictable oscillation between position subject-object both on the stage and off of it.
Disregarding the way the dynamics within individual listening and gazing contexts as well as between them is established, a woman – in the utmost case – appears on stage for the Other; he paid so that he could, hidden in darkness of the hall, secretly enjoy the outcomes of the empirical female and constructed operatic body. But, what happens if that relationship in opera is set vice versa? More concretely, what are the consequences on the ‘protocols of jouissance’ in the Operrrra’s opera-like features when the light form the stage spotlights the audience? When the guarantee of a visual unrepresentability is revoked from the opera devotees? When the desired female body on stage dissolves simultaneously with the operatic body? When the cold surface of the screen offers a fragment of a woman? Her shadow? Reflection? Trace? Could women be regarded as opera’s jewels then, as Catherine Clément wrote a long time ago? Do the powers of the female voice change in those conditions and in what way? Whose medium is that voice and whom does it speak to? Has it got a listener at all or do we submit to it with hope of reaching metaphysics on its wings, metaphysics from which we began the autopsy of the Oper(rrr)a? Or, in other words – to paraphrase Adorno at the end – the female operatic voice itself can never be irrational enough so that we could renounce it, and in spite of that renunciation, save our soul?
* This text was written in a form of a latent dialog with writers whose texts have – in higher or lesser degree, affirmatively or negatively – influenced theoretical, aesthetic and philosophical grounds of the project Operrrra (is feminine): with Carolyn Abbate, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, Catherine Clément, Mladen Dolar, Jacques Lacan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Poizat, Kaja Silverman, Miško Šuvaković, Gary Tomlinson, Slavoj Žižek and Richard Wagner. Quotations form their works and key concepts of their theories, which were used in this text, are typed in italics.
ON POSTOPERATIC CERTAINTY
Jelena Novak
1. If you do know that tonight you are in the opera, we’ll grant you all the rest.
2. From its seeming to me – or to everyone – to be so, it doesn’t follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it.
3. If e.g. someone says “I don’t know if I am in the opera”, he might be told “Look closer”- This possibility of satisfying oneself is part of the language-game. Is one of its essential features.
4. “I know I have a body”. In order to see how unclear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean “I know I have the organs of a human”.
5. Whether a proposition can turn out false after all depends on what I make count as determinants for that proposition.
6. The statement “I know I am in the opera” may than be continued: “It’s the opera I look at”, or “It’s the opera I hear”. Than a reasonable man will not doubt that I know. That this is an illusion has to be shown in a different way.
7. The fact that director has been given an opportunity to stage the opera is more important than the opera itself.
8. “It is possible to check the proposition based on experience” (we say). But how? By which means?
9. I dream I am in the opera and I was killed on stage by the weapons which look like virtual weapons of the video games. It erases square-shaped parts of my hands. There is no pain. I woke up with frustration and unbearable sense of impossibility to repair my own organism... If the dream is an experience, it is checkable. My body disappeared in the opera, but I still knew that I was there.
10. If I simultaneously claim “I know this is a botanic garden”, or “This is unfinished building of botanic faculty”, and “This is an opera”, it is a question how I believe that opera could be played out of the opera house.
11. If I say “Now we are in the opera”, how would you believe me?
12. When we start to believe in something, it is not single proposition we believe in, but the whole system of propositions. Doubt comes after faith.
13. If someone says: “I have a body”, we can ask “Who speaks by that mouth?”
14. If someone says: “My body is in the opera”, we will assume that one is saying that according to the experience, or based on the power to linguistically define his/her position and suggest it to the others.
15. When I write opera, what do I presume?
16. When we accept the term opera we are not defining the difference, gap, between some single works and range of the modernist opera project.
17. If there is no difference in the language, that it doesn’t exist.
18. If I say “I never heard/saw postopera”, where from did I get that knowledge? I didn’t calculate that, nobody told me; it is suggested by my memory. – So, I couldn’t make a mistake? Is that a truth I know? – All the other judgments will be crashed if I separate from that judgment.
19. If I would claim that Operrra is postopera, that wouldn’t be only an assumption.
20. That wouldn’t be an assumption, and I could say that with absolute certainty, as that is something un-doubtable. And does that mean we are speaking of unconditional truth? Is it possible that something I certainly recognize as postopera show as something completely different? Isn’t it able to astonish me?
21. The statement “I know...” is meaningful only connected to the rest of the knowledge archive.
22. Hans Thies Lehman knew that postdramatic theatre works are those in which primate of dramatic texts over the other texts disappeared. Experience taught him that?
23. I am often obsesses with some words. For example, “know” or “analogy”.
24. With what certainty I claim that notions signed as postdramatic theatre and postopera are analogous?
25. How do I establish analogy?
26. On the basis of the next facts: opera texts are not ordered according to hierarchy constructed on domination of some of them; unpossibility of establishing unity of the opera texts that build rhizome-like structure; reliability on institutions of mass art and mass media; existence of postopera, opera after opera, opera after the end of historical opera project and its symbolic death; includings of theory that consider and make legitimate opera works after the finished opera history; 'consciousness' of the opera in the age of technical/electronic/digital reproduction that counts both with multiplication of opera recordings and questioning of the possibilities of technical reproducibility and their conceptualization and performance within the piece.
27. Difference in the language is based on the experience and power. I am certainly confident only in power over my own body and voice. They belong just to me.
28. The power produces experience. Social aspect was always very important to the opera. By the opera, social power was shown. Opera was often a mirror, the sight of inscription of the body of the society, the sight of class struggles.
29. I know that the body and the voice in the opera produce differences.
30. The difference between postdramatic theatre and postopera is empirical: unlike the works of postdramatic theatre, postopera primarily questions, problematizes and redefines specific institution of opera, not the theatre.
31. What is the proof of me knowing something? The proof certainly is not the statement that I know.
32. What I can rely on?
33. Every language-game is based on recognition of the words and things. With the same inexorability we learn that it is a chair, and that 2x2=4.
34. It is not possible to recognize history. It is possible to produce it.
35. Constitution of operatic post-history corresponds with the context of “... strengthening of European and North American integrations, global market, and transnational media industries” in which “theatre is not contemporary trend, but anachronism” (Johannes Birringer). Traditional opera today is possible to be seen as a relict of distant times. It is eclectic and analogue, and as such, it is a foreigner in digital, information, technological, semiotic, media society.
36. Operrrra is postopera in posthistory.
37. If something would happen (if, for example, someone would tell me something), something that would be appropriate to wake mine doubts, it would certainly appear something that would make the causes of the doubt also suspicious, so that I could decide to keep my old faith.
38. And what if something really incredible would happen? If, for example, I would see that posthistory of the opera, without the obvious reason, becomes the pile of polished Italian stones...? Was I right, when, previously, I said “I know that is the posthistory?”
39. Language-game: bringing the bricks, revealing Little Murmaid, composing Classifieds improvizing on themes of popular songs, annunciation of the number of disposable stones. Sometimes one estimates the number, sometimes one establishes it by counting. Than the question is posed: “Do you believe that there is that much stones?”, and the answer is given: “I know that, I just counted it.”. But, “I know” could be omitted. If, however, there are more ways of certain establishing, like counting, weight measuring or sizing the pile, than “I know” could replace description how is to be known.
40. I knew that according to criteria of class and taste, opera was stranger in my world; just I was in opera’s. Corporeality of operatic, coloratura voices disturbed me, triviality of opera libretto plots was repulsive, and static staging was boring and anachronous.
41. Has that proposition excluded the certain type of mistake?
42. If someone believes that he/she is in botanic garden, I believe that he/she could be wrong.
43. I am sitting in the garden with philosopher; he repeats “I know that’s the tree” showing tree standing near us. Third person appears, hears that, and I say: “This man is not insane. We are just making philosophic conversation”.
44. Why we are here tonight? Because there is no opera house in this town? Because we like plants?
45. “I know that’s the opera”.
(Contents, methodology and way of constructing of this text are paraphrase and re/decomposition of the parts of text by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Über Gewwissheit, in: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werkausgabe Band 8, Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1984. We used Serbian and English translation: Ludvig Vitgenštajn, O izvesnosti, Beograd, Fidelis, 1996, preveo Božidar Zec, Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, New York, Harper & Row, 1972).
1. If you do know that tonight you are in the opera, we’ll grant you all the rest.
2. From its seeming to me – or to everyone – to be so, it doesn’t follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it.
3. If e.g. someone says “I don’t know if I am in the opera”, he might be told “Look closer”- This possibility of satisfying oneself is part of the language-game. Is one of its essential features.
4. “I know I have a body”. In order to see how unclear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean “I know I have the organs of a human”.
5. Whether a proposition can turn out false after all depends on what I make count as determinants for that proposition.
6. The statement “I know I am in the opera” may than be continued: “It’s the opera I look at”, or “It’s the opera I hear”. Than a reasonable man will not doubt that I know. That this is an illusion has to be shown in a different way.
7. The fact that director has been given an opportunity to stage the opera is more important than the opera itself.
8. “It is possible to check the proposition based on experience” (we say). But how? By which means?
9. I dream I am in the opera and I was killed on stage by the weapons which look like virtual weapons of the video games. It erases square-shaped parts of my hands. There is no pain. I woke up with frustration and unbearable sense of impossibility to repair my own organism... If the dream is an experience, it is checkable. My body disappeared in the opera, but I still knew that I was there.
10. If I simultaneously claim “I know this is a botanic garden”, or “This is unfinished building of botanic faculty”, and “This is an opera”, it is a question how I believe that opera could be played out of the opera house.
11. If I say “Now we are in the opera”, how would you believe me?
12. When we start to believe in something, it is not single proposition we believe in, but the whole system of propositions. Doubt comes after faith.
13. If someone says: “I have a body”, we can ask “Who speaks by that mouth?”
14. If someone says: “My body is in the opera”, we will assume that one is saying that according to the experience, or based on the power to linguistically define his/her position and suggest it to the others.
15. When I write opera, what do I presume?
16. When we accept the term opera we are not defining the difference, gap, between some single works and range of the modernist opera project.
17. If there is no difference in the language, that it doesn’t exist.
18. If I say “I never heard/saw postopera”, where from did I get that knowledge? I didn’t calculate that, nobody told me; it is suggested by my memory. – So, I couldn’t make a mistake? Is that a truth I know? – All the other judgments will be crashed if I separate from that judgment.
19. If I would claim that Operrra is postopera, that wouldn’t be only an assumption.
20. That wouldn’t be an assumption, and I could say that with absolute certainty, as that is something un-doubtable. And does that mean we are speaking of unconditional truth? Is it possible that something I certainly recognize as postopera show as something completely different? Isn’t it able to astonish me?
21. The statement “I know...” is meaningful only connected to the rest of the knowledge archive.
22. Hans Thies Lehman knew that postdramatic theatre works are those in which primate of dramatic texts over the other texts disappeared. Experience taught him that?
23. I am often obsesses with some words. For example, “know” or “analogy”.
24. With what certainty I claim that notions signed as postdramatic theatre and postopera are analogous?
25. How do I establish analogy?
26. On the basis of the next facts: opera texts are not ordered according to hierarchy constructed on domination of some of them; unpossibility of establishing unity of the opera texts that build rhizome-like structure; reliability on institutions of mass art and mass media; existence of postopera, opera after opera, opera after the end of historical opera project and its symbolic death; includings of theory that consider and make legitimate opera works after the finished opera history; 'consciousness' of the opera in the age of technical/electronic/digital reproduction that counts both with multiplication of opera recordings and questioning of the possibilities of technical reproducibility and their conceptualization and performance within the piece.
27. Difference in the language is based on the experience and power. I am certainly confident only in power over my own body and voice. They belong just to me.
28. The power produces experience. Social aspect was always very important to the opera. By the opera, social power was shown. Opera was often a mirror, the sight of inscription of the body of the society, the sight of class struggles.
29. I know that the body and the voice in the opera produce differences.
30. The difference between postdramatic theatre and postopera is empirical: unlike the works of postdramatic theatre, postopera primarily questions, problematizes and redefines specific institution of opera, not the theatre.
31. What is the proof of me knowing something? The proof certainly is not the statement that I know.
32. What I can rely on?
33. Every language-game is based on recognition of the words and things. With the same inexorability we learn that it is a chair, and that 2x2=4.
34. It is not possible to recognize history. It is possible to produce it.
35. Constitution of operatic post-history corresponds with the context of “... strengthening of European and North American integrations, global market, and transnational media industries” in which “theatre is not contemporary trend, but anachronism” (Johannes Birringer). Traditional opera today is possible to be seen as a relict of distant times. It is eclectic and analogue, and as such, it is a foreigner in digital, information, technological, semiotic, media society.
36. Operrrra is postopera in posthistory.
37. If something would happen (if, for example, someone would tell me something), something that would be appropriate to wake mine doubts, it would certainly appear something that would make the causes of the doubt also suspicious, so that I could decide to keep my old faith.
38. And what if something really incredible would happen? If, for example, I would see that posthistory of the opera, without the obvious reason, becomes the pile of polished Italian stones...? Was I right, when, previously, I said “I know that is the posthistory?”
39. Language-game: bringing the bricks, revealing Little Murmaid, composing Classifieds improvizing on themes of popular songs, annunciation of the number of disposable stones. Sometimes one estimates the number, sometimes one establishes it by counting. Than the question is posed: “Do you believe that there is that much stones?”, and the answer is given: “I know that, I just counted it.”. But, “I know” could be omitted. If, however, there are more ways of certain establishing, like counting, weight measuring or sizing the pile, than “I know” could replace description how is to be known.
40. I knew that according to criteria of class and taste, opera was stranger in my world; just I was in opera’s. Corporeality of operatic, coloratura voices disturbed me, triviality of opera libretto plots was repulsive, and static staging was boring and anachronous.
41. Has that proposition excluded the certain type of mistake?
42. If someone believes that he/she is in botanic garden, I believe that he/she could be wrong.
43. I am sitting in the garden with philosopher; he repeats “I know that’s the tree” showing tree standing near us. Third person appears, hears that, and I say: “This man is not insane. We are just making philosophic conversation”.
44. Why we are here tonight? Because there is no opera house in this town? Because we like plants?
45. “I know that’s the opera”.
(Contents, methodology and way of constructing of this text are paraphrase and re/decomposition of the parts of text by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Über Gewwissheit, in: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werkausgabe Band 8, Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1984. We used Serbian and English translation: Ludvig Vitgenštajn, O izvesnosti, Beograd, Fidelis, 1996, preveo Božidar Zec, Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, New York, Harper & Row, 1972).
A Conversation on the Margins of Operrrra
Ana Vujanović with Bojan Djordjev
AV: Bojan, wherefrom the opera at all, here-and-now? What are your reasons? And what are your intentions with Operrrra...?
BĐ: Operrrra is a hybrid project conceived on the margins of opera, theatre, even television, in a marginal European culture such as Serbian. Just like the history of the Balkans is fragmented, without continuity, similarly the history of opera in this region is based on almost incidental premiers once in a decade or two. In the last couple of years with DreamOpera (TkH and Veličković), Narcissus and Echo (Đorđević), Zora D (Žebeljan), one staging of Nyman's opera and several stagings of traditional operas by Bojana Cvejić, this history accelerates a bit. All mentioned pieces are made as festival productions and don’t have their repertoire life – which means that this Operrrra is also an ‘incident’ in several ways. With the very combination of materials the position of the author is relativised. Only one of the three compositions/acts is composed especially for this occasion (but conceived as an independent piece). Furthermore, through staging, or better through its lack in the traditional sense of the word, this opera or a musical theatre piece thoroughly examines the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk in the age of media, primarily making an analogy between the concept of Richard Wagner and an MTV musical video clip, that takes its place.
As every proper opera, this one is also a commission. On my one I would never start the operatic machinery, but if I’m offered such an opportunity, I accept. What I want to offer with this theatre project that has the word opera in its title is the possibility of a different reflection upon opera today. First of all, a pro-theoretical thesis as its title (Opera of female gender) that is performed through three acts that offer three contemporary modes of perception and utilization of female (operatic) voice: from the excess fetishisation (Kapetanović), through flirting with author pop voice (Đorđević), to exploration of expressive possibilities of voice all the way to its destruction (Walshe). What is under the magnifying glass here is the constitutive element of an opera – that is (female) voice. Further, this performance works with margins of opera and theatre. All the machineries of any opera/theatre piece are set to motion here, but now they are exposed (backstage, venue preparations, almost pornographic details of performer’s body that ‘works’) while what is traditionally exposed to the audience (stage) in this case is mediated (projection screens are the only thing that audience can see). In that way the very pleasure in opera/performance/‘presence’ is delayed/postponed. Finally, the three acts of this opera, besides different ways in dealing with female voice, also contribute to the debate about opera as a popular or elite genre. All three compositions flirt with popular music – from Walshe’s explicit references to pop songs, to Kapetanović's eclectic postmodern layering of different (popular) music genres, to taking over the cantauthor principle by Đorđević.
AV: References to pop culture are often very obvious in your theatre and other artistic works. Why do you use term 'flirt' (or: procedure of flirt), especially in the context of problematics of pop culture? Dealing with pop culture is political and ideological work par excellence... And ‘flirting’ is a totally un-problematising approach; so I'm interested in how do you use it with pop culture, or with theatre and opera.
BĐ: The situation with pop culture in this cultural context is much more complex than it may seem. As you said ‘flirting’ is an un-problematising approach. However, in local context ‘flirting’ with popular music in the framework of contemporary music is an extremely transgressive act because what is desirable/proscribed in the dominant stream of academic composer’s discourse is ‘flirting’/working with ethno music. In that way, on a ‘macro’ level, ‘flirting’ with pop becomes a problematising act par excellence, even a sort of political and ideological statement. What I do with pop culture in my projects (primarily in a long term project Desert of Picture with Siniša Ilić, started in 2002 in Belgium) is using pop images as readymade taken from the omnipresent surrounding (media) culture.
Thesis about the death of the opera (several events – opera premieres primarily, from the first half of 20th century compete for the exact date of that death) is well-known for some time already. Anyone who composes, even stages an opera must position him/herself in relation to that thesis. If course, opera is very lively for a deceased, and it seems that it leads even several post-mortem lives: as an elite art of experiment and exploration at the connoisseur festivals of contemporary opera; as a constitutive element of a national identity of a modern European state in state and/or municipal theatres; as entertainment for the millions (The Three Tenors at stadiums, Mercury/Caballet and Barcelona…); and as entertainment industry through publishing of CDs, DVDs etc. In that way, opera today is inescapably part of popular culture, which is not far from its past, especially in the 19th century. However, in this work, dealing with pop culture/music is primarily present in the musical texts and to a certain extent in the staging – using typical technologies of mass media (TV broadcasting system, video, etc.) while the way of using it is everything but popular – no narrative, no mimesis, ‘presence’ and live performance is mediated, usage of documentary materials from rehearsals and construction of the venue etc.
AV: You talk about and refer to (as well as our other collaborators) the death of opera as important determinant of this work. But, that work – regarding its programmatic (author's) conception, director's staging, many concrete arrangements of the venue/space (unfinished concrete building that is transforming into total stage), locating spectatorship and video, as well as regarding the junction of three independent and different compositions into unique work – is, at the same time, an attempt of re-opening possibilities for Gesamtkunstwerk, which is the climax of opera and its total and totalising universe.
The reference cannot be avoided, so I would like you to explain it. Particularly since there is a problem here that makes all the questions more complex. That is that »your Gesamtkunstwerk« is immanently non-coherent, is de-fragmented from the inside, it misses constantly the totality, which Gesamtkunstwerk from 19th century tried to reach. You position yourself as Wilsonean director-architect who projects the work quite arbitrarily using particular elements (that are not, from the very beginning, determined strongly by director's requirements). Be so kind to explain your relations to the discourse, form, and ideology of Gesamtkunstwerk within Operrrra, as well as relations between that concept and the concept and practice of the death of opera.
BĐ: I have already mentioned that this work deals with margins of theatre and opera, and in that way Gesamtkunstwerk as well. In the same way in which opera as a project of Firentine cameratta, conceived as a renewal of Greek tragedy was doomed to failure from the very beginning, Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk was also doomed to failure, because the return to the supposed unity of music, stage and word is not possible. More specifically, the very realization of Wagner’s concept was not consequent (I refer to Adolphe Appia here), because however radical his reforms were in regard to the music-text relationship, musical structure of the opera, even the opera venue, the staging stayed ‘unconvincing’ and disproportionate to the ‘seriousness’ and ‘graveness’ of the other reforms. As you said, Operrrra (that is its staging/staging) questions the possibility of Gesamtkunstwerk today, but baring in mind the impossibility of it; further: relying on the entire 20th century resistance to mimesis, experiences of ambient and installation art, even body art; even further: relying on the (modified) technology of TV broadcast, etc. And every of these references is in it self an idea of Gesamtkunstwerk.
Death of opera for me is above all an ending to the modernist progress and development – similar thing can be said for drama (post-dramatic theatre and post-opera). That means that each new opera must be an opera about opera, to position itself in relation to the finished modernist opera project, historic operatic techniques and concepts (such as Gesamtkunstwerk, such as bell canto, such as discussion music-libretto relationship, etc.). Therefore my procedure as a director could be called a ‘curatorial’ one – single acts and prologue of the opera are either commissioned or ‘re-discovered’ (Little Mermaid), and re/contextualized in the light of the central thread of the project, in this case the female voice.
When you mentioned director-architect, I can not resist not to read it ‘erroneously’ and mention the venue where Operrrra is realized – unfinished building of the Botanic Institute of the Faculty of Biology in the Botanical Garden. Unfinished building of an institute of a faculty that doesn’t have its own building. Experimental opera in a country with a very week opera tradition that consists of more-less one world premiere per decade or even two decades – and isolated (at the beginning of the text) mentioned ‘steps forward’ in the new treatment of opera are BY DEFAULT realized outside even two opera stages in the city, while an opera house (that is a landmark of urbanism, history, culture and national/state identity of every European capital) doesn’t exist. So this situation of an opera in the botanical garden resembles the construction of the opera house in the Amazon in Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo.
AV: That is why I believe this conversation – in which you articulate your author's positions precisely – is important. Since, as many time up to now, you act with this work in an erased space, wherein almost only inconclusive shadows of traces elapse. So the very context does not obligate you; you are not in situation to bear hard ballast of tradition, neither of expectations. An (unbearable) freedom of self-responsibility is given to you a priori; responsibility that is in your own hands and the hands of your conceptualization and contextualization of the work, which will be also trigger for history.
Therefore, at last I would ask you to define your own comprehension of Operrrra's politics, politics of its procedures and discourse. Considering the concept and the structure of the work itself, I suggest you to think on the line of Jacques Rancier speaking about political art as the crossing that wipes and/or re-disposes the borders between high and popular art, artistic disciplines, different social practices, as well as between art and life - in opposite to tactics of post-modernistic assemblage or confrontation of phenomena and practices from different regimes, whose borders maintain unchallenged. What position is closer to your own? ...I by myself tend to firmer material framing practices, just in order to show that the framings belong to the domains of social competences and mandates; so I have got an ambiguous relationship to your fluctuation through the regimes of high art-pop culture, of theatre-opera-performance, jouissance-art-pro-feministic action, completed »piece«-projected social situation... Thereby this question, as well as the reference to Rancier (Politics of Aesthetics), is directed to support your articulation of your own conception and to face yourself with the responsibility you take for it.
BĐ: I have mentioned several times margins/borders – whether of the two (or more) media, or two regimes of art (elite and popular). What drives me most on my work in the performing arts is the very question of the borders and changing/redefining/displacing the status of an art piece (even the notion of ‘piece’ towards the notion of ‘work’). In Wittgensteinian sense, I think that every new project must set up the ‘new rules of the game’ and in that sense change, expand or contract the borders of the media. What I’m interested in is the politics of form (by which the ruling paradigm is changed), and opera (or Operrrra) formulated as an (from the start unsuccessful) attempt of a Gesamtkunstwerk is an ideal ground for testing the borders and their solidity/permeability/changeability.
You are right when you say that Operrrra is realized in an erased space. However, opera projects that I mentioned earlier as ‘incidents’ do create a referent system. On the other side Operrrra firmly relies on the references from abroad, that is the notion of ‘opera in the age of media’ (J. Novak) and authors such as Willson/Glass, Greenaway/Andriessen, Reich etc. With every new work, these authors give an answer to the question about the death of the opera, that is about the new reincarnation/recombination of constitutive elements (radical re-defining of the performing ensemble, choice of libretto, abolishing of staging by introducing video, etc.), and in relation to the changes in the bourgeois society of late capitalism. If we start with the thesis that Opera is the top art accomplishment of Western (European) civilization and that in order to explain the European society to a hypothetical anthropologist from Mars, we would take him/her to an opera performance, then everything that is happening in opera in the sense of changing the paradigm of the genre, is a political act par excellence.
This project is in a way a hommage to the baroque opera theatre of machines, it is a testing ground for ‘performability’ of those elements which are not human body. In this opera, besides the musicians and singers, the performers are also: the ambiance, the TV technology, but also those constitutive functions of any theatre project that typically not viewed as such: director, dramaturge, musicologists, visual artist/designer, film director, sound designer. So this is a theatre without actors, this is opera without stage (further: without mimesis, without narrative, with no literary connection between the prologue and the three acts, etc.); this arbitrarily composed machinery sets in motion ‘margins’ of every theatre project and puts them in power – and that is its politics.
AV: Bojan, wherefrom the opera at all, here-and-now? What are your reasons? And what are your intentions with Operrrra...?
BĐ: Operrrra is a hybrid project conceived on the margins of opera, theatre, even television, in a marginal European culture such as Serbian. Just like the history of the Balkans is fragmented, without continuity, similarly the history of opera in this region is based on almost incidental premiers once in a decade or two. In the last couple of years with DreamOpera (TkH and Veličković), Narcissus and Echo (Đorđević), Zora D (Žebeljan), one staging of Nyman's opera and several stagings of traditional operas by Bojana Cvejić, this history accelerates a bit. All mentioned pieces are made as festival productions and don’t have their repertoire life – which means that this Operrrra is also an ‘incident’ in several ways. With the very combination of materials the position of the author is relativised. Only one of the three compositions/acts is composed especially for this occasion (but conceived as an independent piece). Furthermore, through staging, or better through its lack in the traditional sense of the word, this opera or a musical theatre piece thoroughly examines the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk in the age of media, primarily making an analogy between the concept of Richard Wagner and an MTV musical video clip, that takes its place.
As every proper opera, this one is also a commission. On my one I would never start the operatic machinery, but if I’m offered such an opportunity, I accept. What I want to offer with this theatre project that has the word opera in its title is the possibility of a different reflection upon opera today. First of all, a pro-theoretical thesis as its title (Opera of female gender) that is performed through three acts that offer three contemporary modes of perception and utilization of female (operatic) voice: from the excess fetishisation (Kapetanović), through flirting with author pop voice (Đorđević), to exploration of expressive possibilities of voice all the way to its destruction (Walshe). What is under the magnifying glass here is the constitutive element of an opera – that is (female) voice. Further, this performance works with margins of opera and theatre. All the machineries of any opera/theatre piece are set to motion here, but now they are exposed (backstage, venue preparations, almost pornographic details of performer’s body that ‘works’) while what is traditionally exposed to the audience (stage) in this case is mediated (projection screens are the only thing that audience can see). In that way the very pleasure in opera/performance/‘presence’ is delayed/postponed. Finally, the three acts of this opera, besides different ways in dealing with female voice, also contribute to the debate about opera as a popular or elite genre. All three compositions flirt with popular music – from Walshe’s explicit references to pop songs, to Kapetanović's eclectic postmodern layering of different (popular) music genres, to taking over the cantauthor principle by Đorđević.
AV: References to pop culture are often very obvious in your theatre and other artistic works. Why do you use term 'flirt' (or: procedure of flirt), especially in the context of problematics of pop culture? Dealing with pop culture is political and ideological work par excellence... And ‘flirting’ is a totally un-problematising approach; so I'm interested in how do you use it with pop culture, or with theatre and opera.
BĐ: The situation with pop culture in this cultural context is much more complex than it may seem. As you said ‘flirting’ is an un-problematising approach. However, in local context ‘flirting’ with popular music in the framework of contemporary music is an extremely transgressive act because what is desirable/proscribed in the dominant stream of academic composer’s discourse is ‘flirting’/working with ethno music. In that way, on a ‘macro’ level, ‘flirting’ with pop becomes a problematising act par excellence, even a sort of political and ideological statement. What I do with pop culture in my projects (primarily in a long term project Desert of Picture with Siniša Ilić, started in 2002 in Belgium) is using pop images as readymade taken from the omnipresent surrounding (media) culture.
Thesis about the death of the opera (several events – opera premieres primarily, from the first half of 20th century compete for the exact date of that death) is well-known for some time already. Anyone who composes, even stages an opera must position him/herself in relation to that thesis. If course, opera is very lively for a deceased, and it seems that it leads even several post-mortem lives: as an elite art of experiment and exploration at the connoisseur festivals of contemporary opera; as a constitutive element of a national identity of a modern European state in state and/or municipal theatres; as entertainment for the millions (The Three Tenors at stadiums, Mercury/Caballet and Barcelona…); and as entertainment industry through publishing of CDs, DVDs etc. In that way, opera today is inescapably part of popular culture, which is not far from its past, especially in the 19th century. However, in this work, dealing with pop culture/music is primarily present in the musical texts and to a certain extent in the staging – using typical technologies of mass media (TV broadcasting system, video, etc.) while the way of using it is everything but popular – no narrative, no mimesis, ‘presence’ and live performance is mediated, usage of documentary materials from rehearsals and construction of the venue etc.
AV: You talk about and refer to (as well as our other collaborators) the death of opera as important determinant of this work. But, that work – regarding its programmatic (author's) conception, director's staging, many concrete arrangements of the venue/space (unfinished concrete building that is transforming into total stage), locating spectatorship and video, as well as regarding the junction of three independent and different compositions into unique work – is, at the same time, an attempt of re-opening possibilities for Gesamtkunstwerk, which is the climax of opera and its total and totalising universe.
The reference cannot be avoided, so I would like you to explain it. Particularly since there is a problem here that makes all the questions more complex. That is that »your Gesamtkunstwerk« is immanently non-coherent, is de-fragmented from the inside, it misses constantly the totality, which Gesamtkunstwerk from 19th century tried to reach. You position yourself as Wilsonean director-architect who projects the work quite arbitrarily using particular elements (that are not, from the very beginning, determined strongly by director's requirements). Be so kind to explain your relations to the discourse, form, and ideology of Gesamtkunstwerk within Operrrra, as well as relations between that concept and the concept and practice of the death of opera.
BĐ: I have already mentioned that this work deals with margins of theatre and opera, and in that way Gesamtkunstwerk as well. In the same way in which opera as a project of Firentine cameratta, conceived as a renewal of Greek tragedy was doomed to failure from the very beginning, Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk was also doomed to failure, because the return to the supposed unity of music, stage and word is not possible. More specifically, the very realization of Wagner’s concept was not consequent (I refer to Adolphe Appia here), because however radical his reforms were in regard to the music-text relationship, musical structure of the opera, even the opera venue, the staging stayed ‘unconvincing’ and disproportionate to the ‘seriousness’ and ‘graveness’ of the other reforms. As you said, Operrrra (that is its staging/staging) questions the possibility of Gesamtkunstwerk today, but baring in mind the impossibility of it; further: relying on the entire 20th century resistance to mimesis, experiences of ambient and installation art, even body art; even further: relying on the (modified) technology of TV broadcast, etc. And every of these references is in it self an idea of Gesamtkunstwerk.
Death of opera for me is above all an ending to the modernist progress and development – similar thing can be said for drama (post-dramatic theatre and post-opera). That means that each new opera must be an opera about opera, to position itself in relation to the finished modernist opera project, historic operatic techniques and concepts (such as Gesamtkunstwerk, such as bell canto, such as discussion music-libretto relationship, etc.). Therefore my procedure as a director could be called a ‘curatorial’ one – single acts and prologue of the opera are either commissioned or ‘re-discovered’ (Little Mermaid), and re/contextualized in the light of the central thread of the project, in this case the female voice.
When you mentioned director-architect, I can not resist not to read it ‘erroneously’ and mention the venue where Operrrra is realized – unfinished building of the Botanic Institute of the Faculty of Biology in the Botanical Garden. Unfinished building of an institute of a faculty that doesn’t have its own building. Experimental opera in a country with a very week opera tradition that consists of more-less one world premiere per decade or even two decades – and isolated (at the beginning of the text) mentioned ‘steps forward’ in the new treatment of opera are BY DEFAULT realized outside even two opera stages in the city, while an opera house (that is a landmark of urbanism, history, culture and national/state identity of every European capital) doesn’t exist. So this situation of an opera in the botanical garden resembles the construction of the opera house in the Amazon in Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo.
AV: That is why I believe this conversation – in which you articulate your author's positions precisely – is important. Since, as many time up to now, you act with this work in an erased space, wherein almost only inconclusive shadows of traces elapse. So the very context does not obligate you; you are not in situation to bear hard ballast of tradition, neither of expectations. An (unbearable) freedom of self-responsibility is given to you a priori; responsibility that is in your own hands and the hands of your conceptualization and contextualization of the work, which will be also trigger for history.
Therefore, at last I would ask you to define your own comprehension of Operrrra's politics, politics of its procedures and discourse. Considering the concept and the structure of the work itself, I suggest you to think on the line of Jacques Rancier speaking about political art as the crossing that wipes and/or re-disposes the borders between high and popular art, artistic disciplines, different social practices, as well as between art and life - in opposite to tactics of post-modernistic assemblage or confrontation of phenomena and practices from different regimes, whose borders maintain unchallenged. What position is closer to your own? ...I by myself tend to firmer material framing practices, just in order to show that the framings belong to the domains of social competences and mandates; so I have got an ambiguous relationship to your fluctuation through the regimes of high art-pop culture, of theatre-opera-performance, jouissance-art-pro-feministic action, completed »piece«-projected social situation... Thereby this question, as well as the reference to Rancier (Politics of Aesthetics), is directed to support your articulation of your own conception and to face yourself with the responsibility you take for it.
BĐ: I have mentioned several times margins/borders – whether of the two (or more) media, or two regimes of art (elite and popular). What drives me most on my work in the performing arts is the very question of the borders and changing/redefining/displacing the status of an art piece (even the notion of ‘piece’ towards the notion of ‘work’). In Wittgensteinian sense, I think that every new project must set up the ‘new rules of the game’ and in that sense change, expand or contract the borders of the media. What I’m interested in is the politics of form (by which the ruling paradigm is changed), and opera (or Operrrra) formulated as an (from the start unsuccessful) attempt of a Gesamtkunstwerk is an ideal ground for testing the borders and their solidity/permeability/changeability.
You are right when you say that Operrrra is realized in an erased space. However, opera projects that I mentioned earlier as ‘incidents’ do create a referent system. On the other side Operrrra firmly relies on the references from abroad, that is the notion of ‘opera in the age of media’ (J. Novak) and authors such as Willson/Glass, Greenaway/Andriessen, Reich etc. With every new work, these authors give an answer to the question about the death of the opera, that is about the new reincarnation/recombination of constitutive elements (radical re-defining of the performing ensemble, choice of libretto, abolishing of staging by introducing video, etc.), and in relation to the changes in the bourgeois society of late capitalism. If we start with the thesis that Opera is the top art accomplishment of Western (European) civilization and that in order to explain the European society to a hypothetical anthropologist from Mars, we would take him/her to an opera performance, then everything that is happening in opera in the sense of changing the paradigm of the genre, is a political act par excellence.
This project is in a way a hommage to the baroque opera theatre of machines, it is a testing ground for ‘performability’ of those elements which are not human body. In this opera, besides the musicians and singers, the performers are also: the ambiance, the TV technology, but also those constitutive functions of any theatre project that typically not viewed as such: director, dramaturge, musicologists, visual artist/designer, film director, sound designer. So this is a theatre without actors, this is opera without stage (further: without mimesis, without narrative, with no literary connection between the prologue and the three acts, etc.); this arbitrarily composed machinery sets in motion ‘margins’ of every theatre project and puts them in power – and that is its politics.
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