Is "passion" too strong a word to describe what drives people to
stand outdoors for a dozen hours or more, regardless of the
weather, to purchase fold-out seats behind the upper-tier boxes for
a performance of Tristan und Isolde? Not at all, says Michel
Poizat, who here guides his readers on a voyage to discover why
opera rewards its devotees with such profound pleasure, mingled
with equally powerful feelings of horror and loss. His fascinating
book, first published in French in 1986, is now available in Arthur
Denner's fluid and sensitive English translation. Predictably,
Poizat's route is not at all a conventional one. Rather than taking
as his point of departure the intentions of composers and
librettists, he is primarily concerned with the expectations and
desires of the audience. He reports on an informal group interview
with overnight standees on the Paris Opera House steps as they
compare notes on how opera became an addiction. They are there for
a "fix", they agree. How, Poizat asks, does this "monstrous
phenomenon", which stretches its interpreters to their absolute
limits, captivate its audience, making them oblivious of hard seats
or overheated halls and eliciting copious and unashamed tears?
Poizat sees the history of opera in terms of the evolution of the
voice from song to cry, from verbal expressions of emotion to such
wordless outbursts as Lulu's final scream at the end of Alban
Berg's opera. Calling on the insights and methods of Lacanian
psychoanalysis, he distinguishes mere pleasure from
jouissance--pleasure being the joy experienced when one's
expectations are satisfied, and jouissance, the climactic high
beyond self-control. For Poizat, the quarrel between Gluckistsand
Piccinists, the disputes among composers as to which is more
important, "le parole" or "la musica", become examples that
demonstrate or underscore the differences between pleasure and
jouissance. What is the sound of the angel's cry? Poizat believes
that the voice-object stands for that which is irrevocably lost.
Hence our fascination with castrati, whose voice-type will never
again be heard. He discusses the role of this high, sexless "angel"
voice in the Mozarabic church, as well as the gender confusions of
baroque opera and the shift, originating with Mozart, of the
angel-voice from male to female performers. Startling in its
observations, The Angel's Cry is both daring and playful. It will
surprise and delight any opera aficionado, and other lovers of
music will also find it wonderfully enlightening.
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