The Diva's Fans: Opera and bodily participation

Abstract

In this essay, I discuss what I see as one of the main characteristics of opera as a live art form: the very special relationship between a performing singer and a perceiving listener/spectator. I ask in what way the fascination with the live event and its effects can be replaced, or even produced, by mediatized forms of operatic performances. I focus on the possibilities of documenting and even intensifying one of the central ingredients of opera as a live art form: the special relationship between singer and audience member, the active perception of a singer's voice in performance. I focus on the distribution of single scenes, arias, or simply moments of live performances on YouTube from DVD's or pirates, extracted and filmed by fans, making them available to fellow fans worldwide and commenting on them, thus creating a kind of documentation and mediatized transformation of one of the essentials of live performance: the active participation, the chatting and talking, the discourse.

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