Screen Images in Contemporary Opera: Concerning the Issue of the Genre’s Renewal at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries opera theater went through a set of succession
of fermentation, which is connected with the inclusion into the opera genre of new themes,
subjects and new regularities in the construction of opera librettos, with the formation of specific
dramaturgical principles and stylistic discoveries. The article accentuates attention towards the
issue of the changes which have occurred in the genre of opera under the influence of new media
and performances. The author dwells in great detail on illuminating the question of what changes
have occurred within the opera genre under the influence of the media, and what do composers and
theater producers wish to achieve by bringing in screen depictions in opera production. For her
research material the author has chosen operatic compositions in which innovations are connected
with an erosion of the boundaries between art and reality, with a rejection of the regular laws of
drama, with the strengthening of the role of the audience during the process of constructing the
production’s conception. The article examines operas by Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich and Philip
Glass from the positions of manifestation in them of new dramaturgical regularities. As a result
of analytical observations the author arrives at the conclusion that the events instilling into the
dramaturgy of the opera action by means of screen images carry out meaning-generating functions
connected with the creation of the effect of suggestion and estrangement.

Keywords: contemporary opera, new media, screen video images, performance.