Interpretation of Genre in Tan Dun’s Opera Nine Songs

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of studying Tan Dun’s music in light of the theory of performativity. By the example of the composer’s early composition Nine Songs the changes which have appeared in the genre of opera under the impact of live art performance as a new type of theatrical performance. The composition has designed artistic precepts which are also characteristic for other musical-theatrical oeuvres by the composer: specific work with the poetic text directed at destroying the linear logic of the subject and the cause and effect connections; vocalization based on connecting the techniques of the Italian operatic bel canto and the traditional Chinese qupai; a synthesis of music, an abstract poetic text and motions, gestures permeated with symbolism.

The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the interpretation of the genre presented in Tan Dun’s Nine Songs goes far beyond the boundaries of academic traditions of representation of opera. In the poetic text of the libretto the composer deliberately dilutes the meanings encumbered in the primary source, which is achieved by means of infringement of the logic of narration, by accentuating the musicality in the sound of words detrimentally for their communicative function. In the dramaturgy, built with a reliance on the collage method and with an absence of a storyline narrative, the culminations and falls occur spontaneously. The music is endowed with suggestive traits indispensable for creation of an effect of emergence and together with the poetic text and the scenography does not call for conveying any concrete meanings. In this composition the role of the audience is interpreted specifically. The latter assumes the position of active participants of the events, rather than passive observers, and experience a liminal state, the departure from which is connected with an independent construction of the composition’s meanings.

Keywords: live art performance, newest opera, Tan Dun’s operatic works