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Opera out of performance: Verdi's Macbeth at San Francisco Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2005

DAVID J. LEVIN
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Abstract

This essay does two things, one of them analytical, the other more sociological. The former consists in a dramaturgical analysis of Verdi's Macbeth. The discussion is not entirely conventional insofar as its impetus was pragmatic: this section lays out some of the dramaturgical thinking that went into preparations for a new production of Verdi's work slated for San Francisco Opera in the Autumn of 2004. Alas, in the Autumn of 2003 the production was abruptly cancelled. This (non-)event led to the essay's sociological aspiration: a consideration of how and why that cancellation came about. In addition to reviewing Pamela Rosenberg's unusually ambitious, experimental and controversial regime at San Francisco Opera, the essay also speculates on the relationship between a nascent critical dramaturgy and the prospects for innovation on the operatic stage in the United States at this historical moment.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , November 2004 , pp. 249 - 267
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

My thanks to Heidi Coleman, Majel Connery, Michelle Duncan, Philip Gossett, Eric Santner, Emanuele Senici, Mary Ann Smart and Michael P. Steinberg for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.