Publication details
“Hullabaloo” in Boston: Intolleranza 1960 performed on the stage of the Cold War
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | "You see, I know what is absurd in Prague, but those things didn't turn out to be absurd in Venice. What about here? Please, can you tell me now what is absurd in Boston?" This is how Josef Svoboda, Czechoslovak scenographer, commented in the newspapers on his first project in the United States: experimental, politically fuelled opera Intolleranza 1960 by Italian Communist Luigi Nono, staged by American conductor and director Sarah Caldwell in her Opera Company of Boston in 1965 (the world premiere was in Venice in 1961, also in collaboration with Svoboda). The performance deployed projected images (including rather disturbing documentary photographs and films as well as live transmission of both the performers and the audience that served as a powerful political critique), drawing on the principles of Laterna Magika and the Czech inter war avant garde, and thus can serve as a model case of transposition of certain performance strategies from one cultural system (the "Eastern European") into another ("North American"). Moreover, the whole enterprise was striking for the media "spectacle" it was surrounded by due to its contents, political affiliation of the composer, and the complex political and cultural intersection it was created in. In my paper I will outline the process of transposition that the artistic strategies used by Svoboda had undergone in this performance as well as some of the contextual complexities it was embedded in. |
| Related projects: |