The article analyses opera as a place which generates unhealthy excitement in men while being dangerous for women. This is the central theme of Opera, a horror directed by the Italian master of the genre, Dario Argento. The film, which tells the story of a young singer stalked by a madman, may be interpreted as a metaphor for the conservative sexual politics of the opera house. Argento’s work is an excellent introduction to the discussion that swept across American musicology in the early 1990s, about the gender analysis of European musical culture; a discussion that can be summarised in the question: is the opera house a place where women are oppressed or, on the contrary, is it a space for their emancipation?
This article offers a review of Sabina Macioszek’s book Opera, ciała, technologie: Strategie współdziałania w XXI wieku [Opera, Bodies, Technologies: Strategies of Interaction in the 21st Century]. The reviewer appreciates the author’s original approach, i.e. applying the tools of performance studies in research on the opera. However, he questions Macioszek’s general definitions, which result in disconnecting the problem of the interaction of bodies and technologies on the opera stage from the social and political context. The review also argues against Macioszek’s selective interpretation of Bojana Kunst’s theory, especially in the use of the term “project.” Finally, it is pointed out that the author’s positioning of theory and practice in relation to each other is problematic; they function here on the principle of contiguity, which means that the analyzed operas are treated only as exemplifications of the theoretical notions under discussion, rather than as fully-fledged artistic works.
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