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Module Title: Issues in Historiography and Criticism

Module Code:
7AAMM009
(e.g. 5AABC123 )

Assignment: The Grey Box of Operatic Staging Technology


(may be abbreviated)

Assignment tutor/group: Flora Willson

Deadline: 8th June 2020

Date Submitted: 14th May 2020

Word Count: 4196

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

The Grey Box of Operatic Staging Technology


A ‘black box’ is formed when technology, whether it be a device or a system, is described only

in terms of its inputs and outputs.1 The function of the technology is credited, rather than the

process that has occurred to achieve this. Using a black box simplifies the understanding of

mediating objects and neglects consideration of their structures and origins. There have long

been calls to open the box in order to explain both the nature of the technological devices

and how they achieve their effects.2 In 1985, literary scholar Friedrich Kittler argued that the

broader discourse networks around mediating objects should be reconsidered to encourage

redefinition of the way we understand them.3 This would also help move beyond

technologically determined narratives. Approaching the topic of black boxes from a broader

perspective also helps to reveal how standardisation, where functions and uses become fixed

within interpretation, limits the appreciation of technological development and fluidity. Julia

Kursell, who studies the relationship between music and science, argues that the process of

casting new light to re-explore the ‘functioning’ and non-linear development of technology

should be defined as grey boxing.4 Grey boxing is important as it both seeks to open the black

box to explore how a mediating object works and considers why this has previously been

ignored. Instead of simply removing the box, Kursell’s approach encourages investigation into

the effect that its presence has.

1
Langdon Winner, ‘Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the
Philosophy of Technology’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 18.3 (1993),
<https://doi.org/10.1177/016224399301800306>, p. 365.
2
Winner, p. 367.
3
Friedrich A Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990).
Kittler developed the Foucauldian idea of ‘historical a priori’ into ‘technological a priori’ where the
understanding of events and objects is expanded to include what has created it rather than just that it exists.
The focus is placed on a medium and how it has come about.
4
Julia Kursell, ‘A Gray Box: The Phonograph in Laboratory Experiments and Fieldwork, 1900–1920’, in The
Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, ed. by Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld (Oxford University Press, 2012)
<https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195388947.001.0001/oxfordhb-
9780195388947-e-007> pp. 192-193.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

After originating in literary studies and then moving into discussions about recording

technology, the idea of grey boxing has become a popular topic within opera studies. A

traditional black boxed reception of operatic productions limits understanding of the

implications that developments in staging technology has on the genre. Musicological

educator Pierluigi Petrobelli argues that, during the nineteenth century, the visual element of

opera rose in importance, in comparison to the musical and verbal.5 For Petrobelli, developing

stage technology and audience expectations allowed for more interesting and dramatic

staging of works. Attempting to grey box the technology which led to this development

therefore provides a useful insight into how the genre evolved during the period. It also raises

questions about how technology affects audience expectations of current operatic

productions. Recent musicological study has produced several texts which start to address

these questions and present interesting ideas about the relative uses, effects and implications

of staging technology across European operatic centres.6

Gundula Kreuzer’s 2018 book Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of

Nineteenth Century Opera provides a useful example as throughout this monograph, the

author explores how theatrical technology contributed to the conception and staging of

operatic works. Her focus is on the ‘historical context and hermeneutic potential of specific

technologies […] rather than their genesis’ and using Richard Wagner as a starting point,

5
Pierluigi Petrobelli, Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, N.J: Princeton,
N.J : Princeton University Press, 1994).
6
As well as those texts discussed in this essay, other pieces relating to the use and black boxing of operatic
staging technology continue to be published. Some examples include David Trippett, ‘Facing Digital Realities:
Where Media Do Not Mix’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 26.1 (2014), 41–64
<https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586713000311> and Volume 34, Issue 1 of the Opera Quarterly.
Arman Schwartz, ‘A Note from the Executive Editor’, The Opera Quarterly, 34.1 (2018), 1–2
<https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/kby012>.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

explores the interactions between technology, artistic ambition and human control.7

Throughout the book, Kreuzer draws comparisons between the German composer and his

productions at Bayreuth with examples from French grand opéra. Whilst at times this

enforces the familiar narrative of Wagner verses grand opéra, the approach Kreuzer

advocates is beneficial for examining a broader variety of operatic productions.

Kreuzer explains that Wagner provides a useful starting point for her study suggesting

that ‘no canonic composer tried to control and prescribe productions more energetically’ than

he did.8 The author clearly wants to explore both the roles that staging technology had within

the composer’s productions and the effect it had on his conception of the works themselves.

Wagner’s ambition to achieve a Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art’, meant that all

different multimedia dimensions of the operatic experience needed to function as one for a

production to be successful. Rather than the music being dominant, as the composer argued

it had become generally at the time, all elements involved in the production should be united

naturalistically and considered equally.9 However, as Kreuzer illustrates, several of Wagner’s

actions display issues with the consistency of his implementation of this ideology.10 Wagner

hid elements of the production away, such as the orchestra and machinery to work the set

and curtains, and effectively black boxed them. This meant that their effect could be seen and

appreciated, rather than the reality of how they worked. By emphasising the result, rather

than the process, the production seen by the audience does not encourage recognition of the

collaborative nature of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Attempting to grey box Wagner’s use of

7
Gundula Katharina Kreuzer, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera,
(Oakland, California: University of California Press, [2018]), p. 5.
8
Kreuzer, p. 6.
9
Kreuzer, p. 12.
10
Kreuzer, p. 14.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

technology highlights how the composer’s mode of operatic production was heavily

influenced by the establishment of black boxes.

In her review of Curtain, Gong, Steam, Micaela Barabello demonstrates how a

Gesamtkunstwerk is mechanically biased and thus presents another floor in its ideology.11 The

risk of the technological workings of a production being revealed, either through their success

or failure, raises questions about what happens if the illusion on stage is broken. Should the

black box be removed, or even greyed, the ideal of a Gesamtkunstwerk risks collapsing as the

guise of unity and naturalism is broken. If too much consideration is given to how technology

functions, the balance of cause and aesthetic result may become disrupted. The separation

of cause and effect does not provide the technology with necessary credit for the role it had

in delivering the productions. Wagner scholar John Deathridge suggests that Kreuzer’s grey

boxing approach acknowledges how the ‘secret machines and hidden wires [used at Bayreuth

were] themselves actors’ and by making them visible encourages a more rounded

interpretation of the whole productions.12 The importance of masking and secluding is

continued through Kreuzer’s choice of title for her book; curtains and steam both provide

physical methods of covering something else and as such form another level of illusion

beyond that of the black boxed technology used to produce them.13

A further argument Kreuzer presents about Wagner’s use of black boxing is that the

composer was influenced by his lack of technological understanding.14 Due to his reliance on

11
Micaela Baranello, ‘Review - Curtain, Gong, Stream: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera,
by Gundula Kreuzer’, College Music Symposium, 59.1 (2019)
<https://doi.org/10.18177/sym.2019.59.sr.11418>.
12
John Deathridge, back cover review on Gundula Katharina Kreuzer’s Curtian, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian
Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera, 2018.
13
The gong also potentially provides a method of seclusion though the volume of noise it can create.
14
Kreuzer p. 18.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

technicians and artists to realise his visual concepts, the composer became a victim of black

boxing, being only conscious that something was functioning to achieve what he wanted to

see and experience. This explanation suggests that the concept of a black box is not static: it

exists on a spectrum depending on how much is known about its presence. Granularity

appears where a sliding scale is formed between a black and a grey box based on the level of

detail that is known about the technology.15 At one end of the scale, a grey box acknowledges

the functioning of the technology and considers how and why the box has been implemented.

Someone who understood how the technology worked but did not acknowledge why it had

been black boxed would be further down the scale. Therefore, in order to achieve grey boxing,

it is important to recognise that the reasons behind the implementation of the box effect the

interpretation of its presence. Although Wagner did not understand how specific pieces of

technology worked, he was aware of why he was trying to hide them from the audience in

order to achieve a certain effect.

Whereas Wagner consciously wanted audiences to appreciate the spectacle produced

by technological effects because of what they added to the total production, he did not

believe that this ideology was shared by other composers or productions at the time.

Throughout her book, Kreuzer encourages comparisons between the German composer and

examples from grand opéra because of the apparent difference in approach to the presence

and use of advanced staging technology. When Wagner saw Le prophète, he accused the great

sunrise in Act 3 of being an ‘effect without a cause’.16 He suggested that the spectacle, the

15
Jerry R. Hobbs, ‘GRANULARITY’, in Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems, ed. by Daniel S.
Weld and Johan de Kleer (Morgan Kaufmann, 1990), pp. 542–45 <https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4832-1447-
4.50053-5>. Hobbs’ definition of granularity demonstrates how levels of understanding and explanation can be
divided and combined into different sized sections.
16
Sarah Hibberd, French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), p. 6.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

first time electric light had been used on stage, was merely a superficial display of technical

ability without having root in the dramatic motivation of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera.17 It

highlighted why, for him, the production did not conform to the requirements of a

Gesamtkunstwerk and was instead typical of the grand opéra genre.

French musicologist Hervé Lacombe describes grand opéra as ‘a product of

technology’ where huge emphasis was placed on the splendour of the scenic designs.18 In his

1838 memoir The American in Paris, John Sanderson explained that the genre acquired its

name because of ‘a greater quantity of thunder and lightning, of pasteboard seas, of paper

snow storm and dragons that spit fire’ than any other theatrical form in Europe.19 These

statements emphasise the importance that the genre placed on visual aesthetic and

technological expertise. Many of the devices and ideas used at the Paris Opéra were

developed from public curiosities (such as dioramas and magic lanterns) and effects used in

melodramas at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The State funding system for the

opera in France meant that theatres regularly had large budgets, and these went towards

developing the equipment and media needed to produce large-scale, visually stunning sets.

One critic wrote of an 1821 production that the Opéra had been transformed into ‘the temple

of magic and the most brilliant theatrical illusions’.20

In her book, French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination, Sarah Hibberd

considers how the genre evolved due to changing political situations and how this led to

developments in audience expectations. Whilst her focus is not to provide a grey boxed

17
Giacomo Meyerbeer, Le prophète, first performed at the Paris Opéra House on the 16th April 1849.
18
Kreuzer, p. 11.
19
John Sanderson, The American in Paris (Philadelphia, 1838), pp. 48-49.
20
Evan Baker, From the Score to the Stage: An Illustrated History of Continental Opera Production and Staging,
2013. pp. 130-135.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

interpretation of the technology of grand opéra, Hibberd explores how the use of visual

effects has previously been oversimplified in its study. Rather than simply providing a source

of spectacle, they, along with the technology used to create them, have a complex

relationship with State politics and provide a demonstration of power.21 Although members

of the audience may have been familiar with some of the devices used to produce theatrical

effects given their evolution from curios, the technology was not visible on stage and their

function, rather than the process, was the focus. Again, the technology was being black boxed.

This example demonstrates how the Paris Opéra also used the black box of the theatrical

space to demonstrate its authority on the population. Their authority was further enforced

through the employment of a committee to ensure that the production and aesthetic values

remained consistently high.

The introduction and development of livrets de mise-en-scène, or staging manuals,

provided another source of authority within opera productions. These books combined the

composer’s vision with the libretto and precise instructions about performer’s movements

and technical effects into a document which could them be used to recreate the production

at a later date. The idea of a staging manual is a demonstration of Lydia Goehr’s ‘regulative

concept’ for the musical work.22 Despite opera failing to fulfil many of the requirements of

her imaginary museum of musical works, the establishment of an operatic canon and the

development of staging manuals as controlling composer-like figures does present

similarities. Kreuzer argues that livrets de mise-en-scène demonstrated how the composers’

sphere of operatic influence became broader both spatially and temporally, echoing the

21
Hibberd p. 6.
22
Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 102.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

ambition of those composing ‘absolute’ music. 23 As such, although the manuals provide

insight into how stage technology worked within productions, they can still benefit from being

studied through a grey boxing approach to understand the reasons behind artistic decisions

and why things were black boxed. Kreuzer and Hibberd explore this idea within their books

through considering the implications of changing power dynamics between composers and

the institutions where they produced their works. The livret de mise-en-scène of Le prophète

included very detailed technical descriptions and highlights why Meyerbeer provides an

important example for considering the implications of using advanced technology on stage.24

According to Kreuzer, he sought to produce an ‘immersive musical multimedia’ experience

where the use of technologies effects enhanced the overall impression of his productions.25

It was not just in Germany and France that the technological progress which occurred

during the nineteenth century effected the evolution of opera. Laura Protano Biggs’

dissertation ‘Musical Materialities in Milan and Liberal Italy at the fine secolo’ provides a

valuable resource for examining the impact and development of technology in Italian opera

houses.26 The text seeks to demonstrate how ‘liberal political imperatives […] were

unmistakably played out on the Milanese stage [and] the material circumstances in which

music was produced and consumed […] tell us the most about the ways music was enmeshed

with liberal era values’.27 Like Hibberd, Protano Biggs does not set out to present a grey boxing

argument, however similarities can be seen in her approach. This is particularly evident in the

chapter on the use of electric lighting at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Here, she suggests how

23
Kreuzer p. 10.
24
Hibberd reference, p. 156.
25
Kreuzer, pp. 11-12.
26
Laura Tiziana Protano Biggs, ‘Musical Materialities in Milan and Liberal Italy at the fine secolo’ (Berkeley,
University of California, 2014) <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/77s5p1q2#main>.
27
Protano Biggs, pp. 2-3.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

the installation of 2800 incandescent light bulbs in the opera house should be interpreted

through a combination of ‘civic and theatrical’ aims.28

The electrical installation was momentous, being the biggest of its kind in Europe to

date and provided electric lighting to the auditorium, stage, backstage and public areas. The

technology itself created a veil of mystery around the event. Although by 1883 several cities

were beginning to see the effect of electric lighting, no such developments had occurred in

Milan so the arrival of the bulbs in the theatre became particularly monumental. As well as

the lack of familiarity around the technology providing a degree of black boxing to the event,

the La Scala installation was also unusual that it did not source its power from on-site

generators but from a power station located away from the theatre. Therefore, a further

degree of black boxing arose around the technology. Protano Biggs argues that the

developments in the opera house provided an emblem for the rest of Milanese society to

appreciate the combined spectacle of engineering design and artistic result. Her argument

advances the usual narrative associated with the installation of electric lighting in opera

houses, by focusing beyond the Paris Opéra, to demonstrate how the use and discourse

surrounding the technology at the time had broader political implications.29The relationship

between the implementation of technology and political power shows similarity to Hibberd’s

arguments about the French opera house.

As Protano Biggs’ case study demonstrates, undertaking a grey boxing method draws

attention to variations and similarities in the use of technology between different European

operatic centres. Another example can be seen in the differences in approach to the use of

28
Protano Biggs, p. 46.
29
Protano Biggs, p. 45.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

the theatrical curtain. The first major topic Kreuzer discusses in her book is the use of the

curtain in opera, which has a long history with changing purposes and symbolism surrounding

it. Wagner’s controlling exploitation of the curtain within his operas highlights his illusionist

agenda in trying to ensure that the audience only sees what he dictates. Kreuzer suggests that

the curtain ‘embodied Wagner’s idea of himself as the master of both the spectacle and its

perception’.30 Through his dimmed auditorium with unobstructed sightlines, Wagner treated

the curtain like the audience’s eyelid, controlling the interaction between the spectacle and

the art. This control reinforces the level of illusion which Wagner wanted to achieve

throughout his productions.

As the nineteenth century progressed, many composers orchestrated the use of the

curtain in their operas with great detail, clearly notating in the musical score it they should be

raised and lowered. This provided an extra level of complexity to the understanding of the

whole stage as a black box; the spectator does not have the agency to view it until the

composer instructed. Kreuzer argues that the practice of the score dictating when the curtain

moved was initially dominated by Italian composers. She describes Donizetti’s use of the

curtain as both ‘musically resonant and dramatically enticing’ as musical resolution from the

overture could only be established once it had been removed and the action on stage begun.31

For Kreuzer, Rossini’s decision to also raise the curtain during the silence following the

overture created a clear moment of suspense and expectation about the opera. He also used

it to create a divide between the diegetic and non-diegetic music within his works. An example

of this is particularly clear in the 1819 composition Ermione where a chorus of Trojan soldiers’

lament behind the curtain during the overture. Meyerbeer followed Rossini’s idea when

30
Kreuzer p. 95.
31
Kreuzer p. 71.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

composing Le prophéte. He began the entr’acte with a band playing in the wings before being

joined by the musicians in the pit.32

Until the 1820s it was typical in the French opera house for scene changes to be done

in full view of the audience.33 Leaving the curtain open suggests that scene changes were

spectacles in themselves. Allowing the audience to see the transformations taking place, the

spectators would become more aware of how the technology was working and so begin to

break down the black box. As the century progressed, the curtains were used more frequently

between acts enabling the new sets to be revealed to the waiting audience. The lowering of

the curtain at the end of a performance became more prominent in Italian opera before it did

in the French and German houses. However, this became more common as time progressed.34

Through continuing to raise and lower the curtain, the mysticism of the stage increased, and

the black boxing of productions became more established.

Based on Kursell’s explanation, the black box surrounding a mediating object, or a

piece of staging technology, begins to be greyed through understanding both how it became

established and how it works. As demonstrated through the example of the theatre curtain,

a black box can become more, or less, developed over time. Kreuzer ends her book through

examining how technology of modern operatic performances continues to be black boxed

and whether the approach to grey boxing works in the same way by considering

contemporary productions. Many advances in science and engineering have occurred since

the nineteenth century and new devices continue to be used within operas. Key areas of

development can be seen in the use of computers and programmed robotic machines. As

32
Kreuzer p. 71.
33
Hibberd p. 13.
34
Kreuzer, p. 96.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

technology has continued to evolve, so has our interaction and awareness of it. Therefore,

some of the spectacle achieved by the installation of electric lights at La Scala and Wagner’s

steam machine occurred through the audiences’ unfamiliarity with the technology behind it.

Nowadays, the audiences’ familiarity with computers and digital media could mean that more

impressive technological displays have to be made in order to achieve the same spectacle.

2013 marked the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth which was celebrated around the

operatic world with revivals and new productions of his works. One example was at New

York’s Metropolitan Opera with the launch of a new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Kreuzer discusses how this production was marketed by living up to a Wagnerian-style

paradox of being authentic to the composer’s intentions and yet exploiting the most modern

advances within staging technology.35 This claim to authenticity was justified through the idea

that the production presented the image and effects that Wagner would have wanted had he

been able to exploit the new technology. The composer was apparently dissatisfied with some

of the aesthetic aspects of the original production as nineteenth-century technology had not

been able to realise his vision.36 The production, directed by Robert Lepage, combined

physical and digital media within the complex set which dominated the performance. The

scenic vision centred around a machine constructed with twenty-four individual panels, each

allowing for 360-degree rotation each side of a central axis. These panels moved to form

different shapes throughout the operas to represent different locations. Images were

projected onto the panels using video and static pictures. (See Figure 1). The visual aspects of

35
Kreuzer p. 2.
In an interview with the New York Times, Lepage stated that he wanted to also ‘trip all of [the added political
interference and interpretation] from the 20th century and go back to the 19th century’.
Daniel Wakin J., ‘The Met’s Ring After Oiling’, New York Times, 22 April 2012
<https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/arts/music/robert-lepage-on-ring-cycle-changes-at-metropolitan-
opera.html?searchResultPosition=3> [accessed 28 December 2019].
36
Kreuzer pp. 224 - 226.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

the production received generally negative reviews with The Boston Globe critiquing the

‘fetishization of technological brilliance at the expense of just about everything else’.37

Kreuzer suggests that the use of such a piece of technology could be considered to enhance

Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk concept through its sculptural and architectural look which

appeared to transform as nature.38 However, by placing so much public attention on the

technology, Wagner’s ideal of hiding clearly mechanical devices in order to seamlessly provide

dramatic effect is compromised. The black box begins to break down as the audience

becomes more aware of what is causing the effects.

Figure 1. The set of Robert Lepage’s Metropolitan


Opera production of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Photograph Credit: Ken Howard
Source: New York Times article, Daniel J. Wakin.

In the introduction to her book, Kreuzer is keen to suggest that attempting to grey box

the use of operatic technology provides one method of problematising the narrative that

Wagner was uniquely responsible for all the changes in how operas were staged during the

37
Jeremy Eichler, ‘The Met’s Digital Valhalla’, The Boston Globe, 6 May 2012
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/05/05/the-met-digital-valhalla-technology-and-ring-the-met-
digital-valhalla-technology-and-ring/EUGdMLI9JciBqs4TbINhtO/story.html> [accessed 27 December 2019].
38
Kreuzer p. 229.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

nineteenth century. As the cases she provides show, developments in technology were

influencing productions across Europe. Both Hibberd and Protano Biggs demonstrate that

understanding both how technology works and how its presence may previously have been

underacknowledged provides important links between the aesthetics and politics of the

operatic stage. Continuing to develop grey boxing research may provide further insight into

the implications of hierarchy within operatic production and consideration of where black

boxes become a method of establishing political control over the audience. A theatrical

curtain marks a threshold between the stage and the audience as well as between aesthetic

illusion and technical clarity. This divide is based on what the composer, and others involved

in mounting productions, allow to be seen. Within modern productions, approaching

reception studies within a grey boxing framework also helps to understand how our

relationships to technology have developed. From the example of Lepage’s production in New

York, it would suggest that there is now a greater expectancy for visually impressive and clever

technology to be exploited within operas. However, continuing to use Kursell’s grey boxing

theory will help to explain how the formation of the black box and the audience’s relationship

to it may be culturally dependant. Re-exploring the functioning of nineteenth century staging

technology and understanding how black boxes are still being formed in the opera house

raises important questions about the changing expectations of productions and further study

is necessary to understand its implications within the broader operatic world.

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7AAMM009: Issues in Historiography and Criticism Candidate Number: A02268

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Opera, by Gundula Kreuzer’, College Music Symposium, 59.1 (2019)
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Daniel, Purdy, ‘Digital Humanities and Aesthetic Autonomy: The Afterlife of Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse
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<https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/05/05/the-met-digital-valhalla-technology-and-ring-the-
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December 2019]

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Clarendon Press, 1992)

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