Opera Overture and Directorial Commentary: An (un)Happy Abuse?
Notes in the Margin of a Question by Osthoff
Abstract
The seventh and last question proposed by Wolfgang Osthoff in his essay on the art work and its performing process can be reformulated in this way: is it right to comment on stage instrumental opera pieces like the ouverture which originally did not involve a stage direction? Osthoff reasserted the clear distinction among sections that were entirely musical and sections that were dramatic-musical, being the opera proportions at risk. Nowadays, pondering about the whole opera theoretical structure, Osthoff seems to adopt a generalization that may be hard to support. Examining a few performances as a pattern of a reviewed interpretation on the basis of Alberto Bentivoglio’s devoted studies upon Giorgio Strehler’s work as a director, this paper suggests four kinds of solutions. For example, it shows that a priori prohibition to create either a stage commentary related to the mere musical sections such as the ouverture or for the others considered as not strictly musical parts does not actually exist.
Submitted: July 8, 2016 | Accepted: Aug. 19, 2016 | Published Dec. 20, 2016 | Language: it
Keywords Opera • Production • Ouverture • Osthoff
Copyright © 2016 Fabio Dal Corobbo. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2385-2720/VA-25-16-16