Meta-Opera

Speranza

The keyword seems to be

"meta-opera"

--- pretentious as that sounds.

When in the right mood, I actually seem to _love_ meta-opera.

There are obvious cases, but which are not perhaps 'meta-operatic'. Think of the use of "Rinaldo" in Gay's "Beggar Opera": "Let us take the road...".

So one is somewhat pleased to see (in the references in ps below) "The Beggar's Opera" as being referred to as the "British meta-opera" (_par excellence_ almost).

But then, I'm not sure if it fits everyone's 'rules' for 'meta-opera'. Should it?

There's the "Don Giovanni" passage -- which is problematic.

Or the 'use' of Verdi's "Nabucco" in "Don Bucefalo", etc.

We may need examine how we can define 'meta-opera' more technically.

I hope that the earliest opera (within an opera) ever quoted, in a meta-operatically manner is "Dafne"? (Provided "Dafne" is, as apparently it isn't, the first opera ever?).

Speranza

Some Google hits for 'meta-opera' then

1) "Meta-Opera or Anti-Opera?"

Björn Heile - Vikipeedia, vaba entsüklopeedia
et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Björn_Heile'"Transcending Quotation": Cross-cultural Musical Representation in Mauricio Kagel's Die Stücke der Windrose für ... 'Meta-Opera or Anti-Opera? Mauricio ...

2) Anthony Brandt: The Birth of Something; The Dragon and the ... www.allmusic.com/.../anthony-brandt-the-birth-...... music by Anthony Brandt and libretto by Will Eno, as "a miniature meta-opera. ... Besides being self-referentially operatic (with quotes from or allusions to Das ...

3) Carsen's "Tosca" as a 'meta-opera':

The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, ... - Resultado de Google Books
Carsen's Tosca is a prime case of performative meta-opera, and it is ... so – the music was unexpectedly interrupted before Hans Sachs's final, politically very ... one of the speakers parodies a famous quotation from Sachs's earlier monologue ...

4) "Prima Donna" as a meta-opera

Prima Donna gets premiere after all - thestar.com
www.thestar.com/entertainment/.../66367... - 11 Jul 2009 – Although the music is expected to be in the same lush idiom as his pop ... the libretto for Prima Donna is postmodern in that it is a meta-opera.

5) "The Beggar's Opera" as a 'meta-opera' ("British meta-opera" (Gilman 545)).
Introduction - Ashgate
www.ashgate.com/.../Twentieth-Century_British_... - increasingly synthetic movement between literature and music. such ... 1 While Gay's work was a prominent “British meta-opera” (Gilman 545) in its ..... collaborators regarded the revised version as a structural improvement, I will quote from the ...

6) MUSIC AND 'MUSIC' IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY META ...
journals.cambridge.org/.../action/cjoGetFulltext?... - meta-opera are not songs but operatic arias and recitatives, which do not differ ..... of the virtuosa Reginella, in praising her daughter's singing skills, 'quotes' ...

7) Newspapers marciaadair.com/.../Marcia-Adair-Giant-PDF-Sa... - Although the music is expected to be in the same lush idiom as his pop songs, the libretto for Prima Donna is postmodern in that it is a meta-opera. The idea for the ..... and carefully selected quotation will be able to help you. For those of you ...

8) "Raaf" as a "meta-opera":

Narrativity in contemporary opera - a case study
obnc.cat/simposi/cat/...pdf/a-gier-obnc11.pdf - romantic melodrama, and is used up to this day in musical comedy and film to .... (another quotation) “celebrity story of our times that includes extreme language, .... Mozart, Raaff is a meta-opera that depicts (quite amusingly) today's opera ...

9) Phantoms at the Opera: The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano ...
www.tandfonline.com/.../07494460100640331 -KEYWORDS: Corigliano, Hoffman, postmodernism, simulacrum, meta-opera, camp ... rather becomes reformulated by the music and the theatrical situation. ..... 2s. For Ghosts does not say, "Clever listener, did you notice the quotation ...