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The Erotic and the Sacred Body in Opera: The Venusberg to Monsalvat — and Beyond

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Abstract

In Peter Hall’s production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, as the princess (Maria Ewing) removed the last of her seven veils, she stood for a moment, facing the audience, entirely naked. Salome offers the sight of her body, eroticized by dance, as payment for satisfying her desire for another body, eroticized (for her) by holy abstinence. Peter Hall took equal care with the presentation of that body, choosing a singer (Michael Devlin) who could appear precisely to match the terms in which Salome describes the birth of desire, as the drama presents it: ‘Wie abgezehrt er ist! Er ist wie ein Bildnis aus Elfenbein’ [How emaciated he is! He is like an ivory statue].1 Rarely in opera is the body so eroticized, and rarely can singers so present that erotic subject with such realism.2

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References

Archive materials

  • Moses and Aaron (in English, trans. David Rudkin), radio broadcast from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1 July 1965. British Library, National Sound Archive, T59W-T59R.

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  • Radio broadcast discussion of the Royal Opera House performances of Moses and Aaron in 1965 in the series ‘Talking About Music’ (including contributions from Peter Hall, Georg Soltì and Mrs Gertrude Schoenberg). British Library, National Sound Archive, 1LP0151842.

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  • Materials related to the 1965 production of Moses and Aaron, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, archives (production photographs, press cuttings).

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Orchestral scores

  • Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, ed. Christian Martin Schmidt, Sämtliche Werke, Abteilung III: Bühnenwerke, Series A, vol. 8/1 & 2, B. Schott’s Söhne: Mainz, 19771978 (reprinted in one volume, London, 1984).

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  • Richard Strauss, Salome, London: Eulenberg, 1943.

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  • Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, Leipzig: Peters, 1982.

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  • Richard Wagner, Parsifal, Leipzig: Peters, n.d.

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Books and essays

  • Carolyn Abbate, ‘The Parisian “Vénus” and the “Paris” Tannhäuser’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 36 (1983), pp. 73–123.

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  • Lucy Beckett, Richard Wagner: ‘Parsifal’, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1981).

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  • Wagner, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, trans. William Ashton Ellis, 8 vols (London, 1892–1899).

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  • Karl H. Wörner, Schoenberg’s ‘Moses and Aaron’, with the complete libretto in German and English (a translation for singers by Allen Forte), trans. Paul Hamburger (London, 1963).

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Audio-visual materials

  • Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, dir. Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, cond. Michael Gielen; Austrian Television/ARD, 1974; DVD, Kinokuniya (Japan), 2006.

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  • Schoenberg, dir. Reto Nickler, cond. Daniele Gatti, Vienna State Opera; DVD (Arthaus Musik, 2006).

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  • Richard Strauss, Salome, dir. Peter Hall, cond. Edward Downes, Royal Opera House, London]; DVD (Covent Garden Pioneer, 1992)

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  • Wagner, Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, dir. Götz Friedrich, cond. Colin Davis; Bayreuth Festival; VHS, Philips, 1978 (the Paris Act 1, with full Venusberg Bacchanale; the Dresden Act 2, with Walther von der Vogelweide).

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  • Wagner, Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, dir. Wolfgang Wagner, cond. Giuseppi Sinopoli, Bayreuth Festival; DVD (EuroArts, 1989) (the Dresden version, with adaptations).

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  • Wagner, Parsifal, dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, cond. Armin Jordan; TMS Films Munich, 1982; DVD (Corinth Films, 1988).

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Authors
  1. David Fuller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Studies, University of Durham, UK

    Corinne Saunders (Professor) & Ulrika Maude (Lecturer in English) (Professor) &  (Lecturer in English)

  2. Centre for Medical Humanities, University of Durham, UK

    Jane Macnaughton (Co-Director) (Co-Director)

Copyright information

© 2009 David Fuller

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Cite this chapter

Fuller, D. (2009). The Erotic and the Sacred Body in Opera: The Venusberg to Monsalvat — and Beyond. In: Saunders, C., Maude, U., Macnaughton, J. (eds) The Body and the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234000_16

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