Opera for Everyone

Megan Steigerwald Ille is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Introduction
From Recession to Pandemic: Operatic Contexts
Yuval Sharon and The Industry
Methods: Precarity, Perspectives, and Critique
Plan of Book
Chapter 1: Opera as Mobile Music: Invisible Cities
Introduction
Experiencing Mediated Performance: Logistics
Interpretive Ambiguity, Audience Agency
Performance History and Digital Adaptation
Writing for Headphones: Making Sound Design Visible
New Rules of Spectatorship: Listening to Invisible Cities
Audile Techniques and Consumerism
Wagner’s Invisible Theater, Brecht’s headphones?
Convention or Experimentation?
Conclusions: Contradictory Spectatorships and the Operatic Genre
Chapter 2: Operatic Economics: Liveness and Labor in Hopscotch
Introduction
Operatic Tradition on Wheels: The Production
Fractured Logistics
Hybrid Spectatorships
The Labor of the Live
Mediated Entertainment and Operatic Distance
Look at Me! Isolation in Digital Performance
Curation and Commodification
Mediating Intimacy and Isolation
Performers, Participants, and Power
Participating in Precarity
Commodities and Conclusions
Chapter 3: Experiments with Institutionality: Galileo, War of the Worlds, and ATLAS
Introduction
Precarities and Production: Galileo and War of the Worlds
Traditional Structures and Closed Systems
Closed Institutional Precedents and Contemporary Manifestations
New Approaches to Political Economy: Open Models of Production
Open Institutional Lineages: Economic and Experimental Tensions
War of the Institutional Frameworks?
Coda: ATLAS
Chapter 4: “What you remember doesn’t matter”: Toward an Anti-Colonial Opera
Introduction
Colonizer Opera
New Models of Collaboration
Experimenting with Form: From Workshop to Film
Representing Individuals, Rejecting Tokenism, Re-envisioning Opera
Moving Beyond Colonial Collaboration: Rehearsals
Moving Beyond Colonial Collaboration: Performer Composition
“If you’re going to change opera, you have to change it”: Lingering Colonial Hierarchies
Conclusion: Colonial Hauntings, Anti-Colonial Ambiguities
Epilogue
Introduction
Closing the Curtain on Sweet Land: March-November 2020
The Future of Opera for Everyone and The Industry’s Artistic Director Collective
Everyone’s Opera