The Labyrinths of Global Opera.
In 2017, on the debut of the soprano Hui He in the role of Aida at the Hong Kong Opera, a Japanese finance and business website published a short article to introduce its readers to Verdi's monumental opera and more general issues of cultural appropriation and whitewashing related to it. What caught...
| Publicado en: | Cambridge Opera Journal Vol. 35; no. 3; pp. 282 - 293 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Cambridge University Press
Nov2023
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=173996174&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 173996174 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09545867 7XN jtl: Cambridge Opera Journal issn: 09545867 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2023 vid: 35 iid: 3 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 173996174 10.1017/S0954586723000162 ppf: 282 ppct: 11 formats: tig: atl: The Labyrinths of Global Opera. aug: au: Milella, Francesco affil: University of Cambridge, UK su: Verdi, Giuseppe, 1813-1901 Opera Locke, John, 1632-1704 Cultural appropriation Business finance Opera festivals Hong Kong (China) sug: subj: Hong Kong (China) Verdi, Giuseppe, 1813-1901 Opera Locke, John, 1632-1704 Cultural appropriation Business finance Opera festivals ab: In 2017, on the debut of the soprano Hui He in the role of Aida at the Hong Kong Opera, a Japanese finance and business website published a short article to introduce its readers to Verdi's monumental opera and more general issues of cultural appropriation and whitewashing related to it. What caught my attention, however, was the headline. Short and concise, it grasped an aspect that might have otherwise gone unnoticed: 'Opera Hong Kong's new production of "Aida" in October will feature a Chinese soprano playing an African princess singing in Italian'. The headline writer was probably more intrigued by the multicultural quirkiness of this event and ignored, for the sake of the readers, its cultural and historical implications. In fact, the article itself succeeded in depicting this event as a proper, if not extreme, moment of transcultural encounters by mingling different cultures – the Ethiopian heritage of the protagonist of the opera, the musical aura of Italian operas and the Chinese nationality of the soprano Hui He, opposed to the location of the Hong Kong opera evoked by a Japanese magazine – under the unifying authority of Verdi's Aida. This article seemed to consciously invoke a multicultural dimension built around the perceived prestige of Aida and all the debates on imperialism that, from Said to Drummond and Locke, have become attached to it. Verdi's music is safely placed at the centre of a wide transcultural discourse which, rather than undermining the cultural 'authority' of Italian opera, reaffirms it even more strongly as a proper vehicle of 'global uniformity', as Christopher A. Bayly would define it. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2023 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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