Prompt: Course Blog #9 (Groups); Robin Bernstein

First responders: Tell us what Bernstein is saying. What is her main argument and what are her key terms?

Second responders: What does she call on for evidence? Choose one of her examples and explain how she uses it to support her main argument.

Third responders/Discussion leaders: In class on Thursday, please start us off by addressing the implications of Bernstein's argument and showing how it speaks with or against our previous discussions.

Course Blog 8: Don Giovanni (Jennifer)

I'm sorry - I spaced on the fact that this was a full-class blog and just posted some quick thoughts on my private blog instead. I'll keep this short. I'm going to view the opera from the ideas of Auslander and Cavell, in an effort to explain what I thought was a "glamorously tragic" moment in the opera and why it worked.

 Auslander's consideration of the spectacle of glam rock is clearly relevant to the spectacle of Don Giovanni. As previous writers (Whitney, Kelly, et. al.) have mentioned,  "the set was obviously expensive, the costumes were lush, the special effects were insane" (Kelly). This recalls some of Auslander's descriptions of, for example, John's Children, who "dressed in dazzling white outfits, bounced hyperactively around the stage, became famous for destroying their instruments and equipment, but assaulted each other and ran through the audience" (47).  These performances are intended to amaze and, by amazing, engage the audience. Therefore, it is sensible that a scene's transporting power can be (although there are, of course, other methods) directly proportional to its spectacularity: the most characters, greatest plot tension, most beautiful scenery, most extravagant music, and liveliest action will lead to the greatest transport. (Simplistic, I know, but Auslander cares a great deal about excess.)

Let me give a precise example of the moment I believe meets these qualifications and underlines Auslander's point. During Scene 3 of the first act, the entire cast is on stage during the ballroom scene. There is a veritable orgy on stage among the peasants, the three maskers are dancing mechanically in a corner, and the tension between all of them is clear. Only Don Giovanni seems not to care about the violence nearly all his guests intend to inflict on him. As an audience member, I was waiting for someone to do something. This was engagement. Then Don Giovanni runs off with Zerlina, apparently to have (consensual? nonconsensual? See Iris' post about the difficulty to distinguish which.) sex with her. The Elmer Fudd Masetto was being kept in a corner by dancing girls. How do we save her? What to do? As Cavell points out, the fact that I was held back from running down four flights of stairs, up the aisle and into the wing to save her myself is relevant in itself and shows that I'm in a moment of catharsis: "what is revealed is my separateness from what is happening to them; that I am I, and here" (153-154). By being separate, I am joined with the rest of the audience, also separate. By feeling the desire to save her, I am involved.

P.S. To read the reverse, then, the scenes with the least spectacularity should be the least transporting. This is where my argument falls apart here, since some of the other strong scenes were far simpler (Donna Elvira's self-struggle on the balcony when she leaves with Leporello; the song between Zerlina and Masetto when she's asking for forgiveness). However, I only offer the Cavell+Auslander discussion as one effective way to create transport, not the only way. It seems to be particularly effective for opera, though, which is so "unsettled" that extravagance can somewhat mask its schizophrenic form.

Blog 8 - Don Giovanni - Derek

My understanding of the Cavell reading is that the spectator does nothing because “there is nothing and we know there is nothing we can do” (147) in the sense that “I have given over the time and space in which action is mine” (154). Cavell seems to be saying that this knowledge or understanding is what makes someone “an ideal auditor of serious drama” (154), unlike the yokel who stands up and tries to save Desdemona from Othello. The spectator must “acknowledge totally the fact and the true cause of … the suffering of others” (153). Cavell seems to say that the proper response is for the spectator to be “in awe before the fact that I cannot do and suffer what it is another’s to do and suffer” (154). And in feeling this sense of awe, the spectator is able to perceive and confirm their separateness, which in turn “is the unity of our condition” (154). Cavell seems to be suggesting that this process is important because it is allows spectators “a respite within which to prepare for [the] necessity” of acknowledging the pain of others outside the theater, i.e. in actuality, and by implication that one would take action to help others (149). Cavell explicitly warns that a failure to achieve this sense of awe increases the risk that “I continue my sponsorship of evil in the world, its sway waiting upon these forms of inaction” (154). The spectator, if properly experiencing the play, will leave with an increased ability to take positive action in the real world when faced with the pain and suffering of others.

I felt that the experience Cavell hopes all spectators would have when attending theater failed to occur for me at Don Giovanni in part because of the plot and in part because of the artifice of the mise-en-scène, which for me combine in the moment when the statue speaks in Act 2, Scene 3. Up to that point, I was willing to accept the highly stylized staging and acting, and to deal with the story itself, trying to extract the message, while also thinking about how I might react in the situations (thus approving or disapproving of certain characters’ decisions). As for the mise-en-scène, I was highly aware of the staging. I think the main reason for this was the opening scene in which a lace screen impacted direct visual access to the bedroom, while giant mirrors gave clear views from alternative angles. The actor playing Don Giovanni also engaged in highly stylized (unrealistic) movements as he walked around the bed. Moreover, the dialogue was almost always repeated three times, as well as offered in translation on the wall above the curtain over the stage. As a result of these factors, I did not get lost in the trance, did not fully sympathize with the characters. But I accepted them. I was willing to accept all the strange bits of theater, staging, and acting (which was stylized and kind of dreadfully bad if compared to what we expect from regular theater) which were part of the performance. I say I was willing to accept them because I thought they were supposed to be that way, as part of the conventions of opera (which I have no accurate sense of).

But the moment the statue spoke, I felt differently toward the opera. I suddenly found myself thinking about how much this opera resembled a morality play, and that it seemed to be instructing the audience in how to be good aristocrats and good people, and that its final message is that ultimately punishment should/will come not from outraged members of one's own social class or the lower classes, but from god. This is my main criticism of the story: Mozart brings in god to punish Don Giovanni, instead of making a political argument for the aristocracy to do a better job of policing their own -- or for the peasantry to follow through with their threats of violence against the aristocracy. Therefore, in Don Giovanni, it seems that ultimately the spectator is being discouraged from taking action in the real world. This feeling was unexpected, since I felt that through Act 2 Scene 2, the opera seems to be encouraging action. The story to that point explores the roles of the aristocracy and the peasantry in policing immoral behavior, first with the notion of the aristocracy being responsible for punishing one of its own, and next with the notion of the peasantry justifiably rising up when the aristocracy fails to enact that punishment. But as soon as the statue speaks in Act II.iii, the story removes all responsibility for action from humans and places it in the hands of god/the devil/the supernatural, and thus the spectator is excused from feeling the need to take action in real life, and really is encouraged to remain inactive in real life. Because of this, I question whether this production of Don Giovanni could effectively create the sense of awe that Cavell seems to feel is necessary for theater to have a positive effect on the spectator (in terms of encouraging action in the real world).

Blog Post #8 (Justin): No Exit - Creating Blind Spots in Don Giovanni

To be transported by performance requires a certain blind spot on the part of an audience – to forget that one is seated in an auditorium surrounded by other spectators, bearing witness to a fiction which suddenly transforms into a seemingly real event. Cavell wishes us to understand that through this change we are not within the presence of the actors, but made to be a part of the actors’ characters’ present. Essentially, this notion of transport informed Richard Wagner’s attempts to minimize the aesthetic distance between audience members and the performed spectacle. By hiding the orchestra in a pit in front of the stage, turning off the house lights over the audience, and pushing for a ‘natural’ acting style, Wagner’s ‘Artwork of the Future’ aimed to make the audience forget the ‘staged’ nature of the performance and to be transported into the event. This was a rather lofty goal for the German producer/creator of such an ‘unsettled’ artform as opera (which points to a certain level of hubris within that particular artist).

Taking ‘transport’ as a product of this aforementioned blind spot, IU’s production of Don Giovanni poses a challenge for identifying clear moments when such occurrences might take place. The enormous mirrors in the back of the set reflect back not only the world of the stage, but also the world of the audience with its many human bodies and faces, bright neon green exit signs marking potential avenues for audience escape, as well as large lighting instruments typically meant to be hidden from view as they create the illumination necessary for a view to be possible. The characters’ present is difficult to isolate as my own present, as spectator, is constantly being reflected back at me. Oddly, the most theatricalized moment in the production, Don Giovanni’s descent into hell, served for me as the production’s most successful moment of transport. As the mouth to hell (the perfectly square trap within the stage floor) gaped open, the ample fog billowing forth masked the reflections of the omnipresent mirrors, hiding their reflected images of ‘stagecraft’ and ‘stage space’ from view. As the music swelled and the opera’s chorus sang at its fullest volume, the aesthetic distance between myself and the stage suddenly diminished. I was no longer witnessing the audience witness the production, but was observing a moment unfettered by reminders of the stage. The fog blinded me from those elements which were not allowing me to be transported into the event.  

Course Blog #8, Don Giovanni: The Art of Woo [Sara]

Like many of my classmates, during much of the IU Opera and Ballet Theatre’s production of Don Giovanni, I found myself variously bored, angry, and/or affronted by the frustrating underutilization of the decadent resources that were obviously lavished on the production. If there was a moment of “transport,” however, it occurred for me during the Act 2, Scene 1 in the “wooing” of Donna Elvira. 

In the scene, the lady emerges from a curtained window upstage left, elevated above stage level and lit softly in warm shades of amber that stand in relief against the otherwise cool tones of the bluish “night light” of the exterior courtyard. Framed by the balcony’s arched window, she begins the opening refrain of “Ah taci, ingiusto core,” a trio between Elvira, Don Giovanni, and Leperello that roughly translates as (according to Wikipedia) “Ah, be quiet my unjust heart.” This was perhaps my favorite performance by Kelly Glyptis (Elvira), as her voice seemed to loose its edge and took on a lilting quality that seemed to indicate and thus far undiscovered vulnerability in her portrayal. Only in this moment of assumed privacy is Elvira free to communicate her longing not for lust but love, and her call is answered by Don Giovanni and his servant Leperello who lurk below. 

It was not until this moment that I was able to perceive Zach Coates (Giovanni) as the Lothario capable of bedding more than 1,003 women. In the pearly dark as I watched Glyptis tremble to hear his voice answer her own, I finally understood Abate’s assertion of absorption. The combination of the music and the mise-en-scène took on a performative quality—in Don Giovanni’s words of appeal to Donna Elvira, I myself was wooed, momentarily caught up in the mixture of pride, embarrassment, and titillation that accompanies any competent serenade.

As Leperello enters and adds his voice to Giovanni and Elvira’s, the emotional experience of the music certainly intensifies, but in attempting to make sense of this duet cum trio, I was overcome by a dawning horror as it occurred to me that this male double-voicedness in all its honeyed tones was illustrative of the duplicitous nature of Giovanni’s character. 

Adding to this sudden detachment was a growing “unsettledness” as described by Levin in the juxtaposition of the music with the staging. I was unsurprised and yet still injured at the dumb show describing Giovanni and Leperello’s ensuing plot to effectively swap hats and let Leperello lead Donna Elvira away so that Giovanni might prey on her maid. Adding insult to injury was the abrupt shift in tone and gesture, the mellifluousness of the song was paired with much physical comedy as Coates goaded Jason Eck (Leperello), laughing and pushing him forward toward the window’s halo of light. Even as the crescendo swelled with all three performers in full voice at the songs conclusion, Coates and Eck were already “changing clothes” with a lame nod to the conventions of masquerade in the transparency of their disguises.

This moment recalled for me the memory of Cavell’s Desdemona, in that I experienced an instantaneous recognition of Elvira’s vulnerability while empathetically experiencing the confused desire and apprehension of Don Giovanni’s wooing. In spite of my performance competency, or perhaps because of it, I could “read” her impending peril from the entrance of Leperello’s voice but, nevertheless, continued to feel with her and for myself as I contemplated the efficaciousness of even false wooing.

The next moment, I am less clear about vis-à-vis my own reaction. As Leperello and Elvira depart, Don Giovanni begins to sing “Deh vieni alla finestra” (“Come to the window”) at which time a blonde serving maid appears and begins brushing her hair in a very presentational performance of—what—coquetry? I’m not sure. I thought her mine was meant to be comic, but I found myself annoyed at her self-absorption, vainly staring into the hand mirror rather than engaging with this new scene of wooing. I much admired Coate’s performance of the song and I am still confused over my annoyance. Was this another experience of a somewhat unsuccessful “unsettling” staging that attempted to play in counterpoint with the musical moment, and I was peeved at the seeming irreverence? Or was I feeling a residual empathetic response for/as the jilted Elvira? I tend towards the former, but I cannot be sure. The song, as I understand it, is typically staged in a much more sentimental manner with Giovanni playing the mandolin and treating it as a sort of aria, but the ostentatiousness of the maid disrupted that romanticism and I felt cheated, but for whom, I’m still uncertain.

Course blog 8 [Jenna] Don Giovanni

Before I begin this blog post, I must admit that I have struggled to find an angle from which to write. Like some of my fellow classmates, I failed to find many, if any, moments of transport during the opera. After reading Levin last week, I can safely say that I did find the opera to be deeply unsettling. The singing was at odds with the staging, which was at odds with the subtitling, which was at odds with the auditorium. (I don’t think the surtitles could have been placed much higher…thankfully I had a seat in the rear of the opera house.) Some characters, like Donna Anna, were presentational while others, like Zerlina, attempted to be representational. In a mob scene, one man possessed two pitchforks while the performer next to him prowled the stage holding only a fan. The set was one in which garden benches appeared in bedrooms and servants could circumvent walls but ghosts could not.  In a world in which the characters sang gorgeous classical music, the performers portraying them utilized extremely contemporary gesture, like in the moment in which Leporello flashed Don Giovanni the bird.  I suppose that all of these elements may have been “unsettling” and aesthetically worthwhile, but I, unpracticed operagoer as I am, only found them to be sloppy.

As I watched Don Giovanni, I was particularly irked by the fact that while the stage had a vast number and variety of entrances, characters inevitably struggled to locate its exits. I lost track of the number of times in which a character seemingly forgot that she had entered a garden through a door two feet to her left while groping about the stage in an attempt to find the same door through which to leave the same garden. I am specifically referring to the scene in which Don Ottavio was singing downstage while Leporello, in an attempt to escape his notice, wandered about upstage with arms cast wide while trying to “feel” his way to a door and Donna Elvira, believing him to be Don Giovanni, stumbled along behind him performing the same gesture. During that moment I, like the man desiring to save Desdemona, wanted nothing more than to leap onstage, give those two some lanterns, and point them toward the nearest wing.

On pages 153-4, Cavell writes, 

“My immobility, my transfixing, rightly attained, is expressed by that sense of awe, always recognized as the response to tragedy. In another word, what is revealed is my separateness from what is happening to them [the characters]; that I am I, and here. It is only in this perception of them as separate from me that I make them present. That I make them other, and face them.”

While its been removed from its context and placed in my argument, which may not fit its sentiment perfectly well, this quote gave me pause. I don’t believe I have ever felt as separate from the characters onstage as when I longed to intervene in their world and usher them through the garden gate. I was not in awe as Cavell claims we must always be, but I was immobile, transfixed by my inability to correct the problem onstage. Through my perception of them, they were never more present and never more foreign. I may have been frustrated rather than transported, but in my emotional state, I did find unity with the characters through our separateness.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that my preoccupation with my inability to intervene in the opera did not stem from the intense pathos Cavell associates with the disconnection between character and audience. It was partly a selfish desire to prevent the actors from continuing to mime their insufferable game of blind man’s bluff. However, I am captivated by the idea of forging connections through distance rather than empathy. What does it mean to face the character by making them other?

Course Blog #8 - Don Giovanni - Jess

I wasn't able to see the IU production of Don Giovanni, so I watched two productions online: one is the 2000 Met production with Bryn Terfel and Renée Fleming (complete on YouTube in sixteen parts), and the other is a 2008 production at the Netherlands Opera with Pietro Spagnoli and Myrto Papatanasiu (found through IUCAT on Opera In Video, also complete). I'm really glad I watched both of these productions, because they are so vastly different in approach, style, and execution. The New York  production was very classic - - - think tricorn hats, velvet capes, and other 18th century garb - - - while the Dutch production was mostly modernized. In that one, Don Giovanni looked more like a licentious psychologist than a devious nobleman.

Don Giovanni- Iris

Like Dorothy, I also had a strong response to the first moments of the opera, when Don Giovanni "seduces" Donna Anna. I came to this performance with no background information, and I'm taking Dorothy's word that the staging we saw was unusual (and after seeing the opera, I'm pretty convinced). So what I saw was not immediately unsettling- a guy sneaks into a woman's room and they have a confusing sexual encounter. I'm not sure she's enjoying herself- I'm not sure that he is, either. I won't get into how hilarious I found the staging (It was like he was eating a peanut off of her collarbone!) but at least I think I know what's going on, and that it is, at moments, consensual.

Until Donna Anna tells us that this man raped her. Now, I place a great deal of importance on the primacy of text, even in opera, so I want to believe her. I think, well, if Mozart says this woman was raped, and the director implies otherwise, who am I gonna side with? I start re-assessing every moment I've seen until this one, trying to parse out the issue of consent- and then I realize that several minutes have passed and I haven't heard a single word said onstage. I'm too busy wondering if I'm watching an opera about a suave lothario or a serial rapist.

I also found myself riled up whenever I knew that I was missing text. I knew certain lines were omitted so that the audience didn't have to constantly scan up to the supertitles. But it annoys me when I know that I'm missing things. That was my overall experience of the opera- feeling like I was constantly missing something. Cavell says that "the task of the dramatist is to gather us and then to silence and immobilize us." Personally, I felt like I was only gathered. I couldn't be transported because my mind wouldn't be immobilized.

Don Giovanni (Whitney)

Like Cody, I want to try to take a quick moment to hash out what the notion of “transport” might mean for Cavell. It seems to have less to do with intense emotional investment, in the sense that we are asked or come to feel suffering and pain for the person on stage, and more to do with the emotional state we find ourselves in once we realize both that we are allowing the suffering of the character on stage to take place and just how we are in a position to allow the suffering to occur. As Cavell points out, when Othello begins killing Desdemona, “there is nothing and we know there is nothing we can do. Tragedy is meant to make sense of that condition” (147).

Don Giovanni is really the first opera I’ve seen (unless you count Andrew Lloyd Weber which, I believe, real opera-goers never do), so I can’t presume to make any claims about whether or not opera in general can have the kind of transporting effect Levin and Cavell seem to be discussing in different ways. In terms of this particular production, though, I was transported more by the structure of the apparatus than by its content. For me, the element of the production that purged my “attachment from everything but the present” was the mirrored backdrop (153). On a quick side note, after reading Dorothy’s post, I’m disappointed to admit that I didn’t even think about the mirrors in relation to Don Giovanni and his narcissistic view of the world (but it’s a great point and I would have enjoyed adding that layer of analysis to my viewing of this production).

To me, though, the mirrors were much more significant due to their constant calling out of the structure of the production. In other words, through the mirrors I could not only see the framing of the stage and the audience reflected back onto the stage itself, but also the motion of the conductor and the front of the orchestra, the back of the actors, and the actors’ shadows cast back onto the stage from the front spotlights. The effect was incredibly thrilling and, admittedly, I was often pulled out of the action of the story itself because of my desire to watch the production from this seemingly alternative perspective the director was offering. I especially loved watching the motions of the conductor from the front, a perspective an audience member wouldn’t normally be privy to without the mirroring effect. Earlier I suggested that this element of the production pulled me out of the action of the play, but that’s not to suggest that I, therefore, wasn’t transported during the experience. I was transported by my awe of the complex and grand structure of the operatic apparatus that I saw, literally, mirrored before my eyes. It actually enabled the recognition of my separation from the actors and their presence within time and space (so important for Cavell’s notion of tragedy and our experience of it), even as it put me on stage within the space of the actors via the mirror.

Again, I can’t speak to the transporting effect of any general aspects of opera, but this particular performance of Don Giovanni seems to suggest that rather than needing to overcome its structuring and patent artifice in order to transport its audience, opera’s calling out of its own structuring can provide an alternate way for the audience to be transported? A different methodology but one that can, ultimately, produce the same result.

My First Opera Ever Or, Why I'm Bad At Opera [Lusk]

I have never seen an opera. I don't know why. My parents weren't too big about the arts, they are supporters and maybe we would go see Christmas Carol every other year downtown. But they are much of the mindset 'why fund a play when you can buy a new MRI machine for the hospital'. So, once I became invested in the theatre and began writing and attending productions regularly,  I believe my parents have always been in the back of my mind and I get very suspicious of lavish productions. And Don Giovani was the definition of this frustration.

Upon walking into the theater (for the first time ever) I was taken back by how gigantic it is. It's huge! My brain immediately stared to compare the two performance spaces the Theatre department has versus the MAC and I became instantly overwhelmed with the difference. Then the show happened. And the set was obviously expensive, the costumes were lush, the special effects were insane. And that's all I could think about. I felt like I was crunching numbers the entire time. Not only on the extravagant budget of the production, but look at all the people! There were so many people in this theatre! And I think that's wonderful! But how come we can't get those people to see our shows? Why aren't people dressed up to come to a show in the Wells-Metz? Why does the opera feel like such an esteemed ritualistic outing to some, yet... the theatre does not.

And there wasn't anything special about this production. I was actually bored most of the time. Annoyed I had to read and watch. Irked that it's commonplace to ask opera viewers to sit through an over three hour show, but when we do that in the theatre, well... people get upset.

And I left the theatre thinking what Andrea mentioned in her post, maybe "I'm just not a good opera viewer". But is that possible? Should there be an attempted class distinction when it comes to art? Okay, maybe I don't get opera. But I had to stop and think to myself... how could I be bad at viewing something? I was blaming this unsuccessful* production to my own fault. And I think that's wrong. It's almost like viewer's guilt. The feeling of "Oh... I didn't get it... I must not be as smart as these people or on their level." I think that's a terrible way to feel after viewing art.

 *I say unsuccessful because it did nothing for me. I was not transported. I was only transported to a place of frustration. But I was not invested in the story line. I was not invested in the characters, nor the actors who portrayed those characters. I understand that it may have been effective for some and that's fantastic! I'm glad! I also understand that there will be shows that are effective for me and not for others. That's amazing too! But, for me, it was not a successful production.

I have friends who have cathartic experiences at the opera. They gush over it. Very similarly to the moment in Philadelphia with Tom Hanks, as Ellen mentioned in class the other day. And I watch that scene with Tom Hanks. And I want that. Oh, do I want that. I was to feel that way about the opera and cry at the mere thought of the last time I was transported. And what does that say about me? That I can't go there? Does that make me an unsuccessful artist? Or even, in the case of Philadelphia, an unsuccessful gay man? (I know that sounds silly... but there does seem to be this huge kinship between the opera and gay men. It's always in gay literature I read, plays I see... I think it has something to do with the larger than life aspect.)

No. Just because I don't like Opera. Or don't get Opera. Does not make me an unsuccessful whatever.

Because I've had those experiences before. I've cried during performances. I've been transported. I've had the urge to yell from the audience "Please, don't do that. As this play has moved forward I've truly come to see you not as a character, but as a person, and you're about to make a huge mistake and I can't let you do that because I love you."

That was not the case with Don Giovani.
And that's okay.
And maybe I'll learn to become a good opera... but for now. I'm not.
And I'm totally fine with that.

Course Blog 8 (Cody): Don Giovanni

Before discussing my reaction to my viewing of Don Giovanni, I would like to consider briefly the topic of transport,  especially in relation of Cavell's essay.  For Cavell, the emotions incited from viewing a tragedy are directly associated with our investment in the performance and our identification with characters or dramatic situations--identification and investment instigate our transport, our absorption into the present of the performance.  As such, transport, or the process of being transported, would seem to indicate our (implicit) surrender to the performance's artifice, that we are so captivated, even if momentarily, by the action and mise-en-scène that we lose ourselves within the performance's presence, effectively oblivious to its histrionics.  However, I question if transport or the overwhelmingly emotional response to a performance must inevitably necessitate a state of ontological stupefaction.  That is, can I be transported without losing myself, without entirely losing perspective, without forgetting that I'm watching the performance of pain and death rather than the actual transpiration of death?

In retrospect, while watching Don Giovanni, I found myself most transported, most emotionally invested when I, in fact, remained aware of my presence as a member of an audience and of the performance as representation.  During the opera's duration, I had to devote most of my attention to a continual back-and-forth between the stage action and the translations streaming above the stage--a process that effectively made moments of transport extremely sparse and transitory.  And still, the process of reading equally made me forget my presence, as is often the case when I read literature--though, I wouldn't describe this as transport since the act itself had its origins in a need to comprehend and discursively follow a plot as opposed to wholly investing myself in the transpiring stage action.  Nevertheless, moments did pass when I was able to stop following the translations and place my full attention on the stage, especially during the end of Act One, which I would retrospectively deem my first moment of transport.  This moment of transport was primarily incited by my disgust with the hypermasculinity that Don Giovanni embodies (and the actor's/singer's ability to perform well this embodiment) and the potential for his demise at the hands of Ottavio, Anna, and Elvira.  This reaction to Don Giovanni's character obviously represents my own gender politics, but, more importantly, this reaction was equally incited by a recognition of Don Giovanni's hypermasculinity and misogyny as specular of a comparable form of hypermasculinity and misogyny that I see everyday on a college campus.  So, at the end of Act One, I found myself emotionally invested in an anticipation for Don Giovanni's demise--a desire that was defeated by his unbelievably easy escape.  Yet, this transport didn't ineluctably preclude larger prespective or positionality.  I let myself watch the play--as opposed to reading the translations of the libretto--and I was emotionally invested in the scene, but my politics and ideologies (as they exist outside the theatre) and my recognition of Don Giovanni as mimetic of an extra-threatrical hypermasculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny ultimately aroused my transport, my temporary investment in anticipating his undoing.

Perhaps all the latter merely necessitates a more precise definition of transport as distinguished from emotional investment in and identification with a performance, that is, if we wish to keep transport strictly confined to an ontological understanding, like Cavell's, wherein we lose our sense of presence as audience within the performance's seemingly engrossing and exorbitant presence.

Don Giovanni (Andrea)

Since I have been very interested in transport as a dramatic and literary experience so far this semester, it is a little ironic that for this particular prompt, I can say very little about it. I didn’t experience transport or absorption while watching Don Giovanni, probably for two reasons that have nothing to do with the performance itself: I am not knowledgeable about or experienced in opera, and I was sitting in a very bad seat. I’m not sure whether this performance is to blame for my lack of transport, or whether I am just not a good opera viewer.  It could be that when I say that the opera didn’t overcome its structuring and artifice, all I am really saying is that I don’t like opera. I will be interested to hear what people who do know opera thought of this one.

Where I most enjoyed Don Giovanni, though, was in its humor. The scene where Zerlina convinces the injured Masetto to forgive her was one that for me finally rose above the structured nature of the opera. The characters were at the far end of stage right, which allowed me to see them clearly for this scene, as my balcony seat was on the far left. Masetto was lying on the ground and Zerlina was seated beside him, cradling his head. The music in her song was sweet and lively, and she slowly wins him over with humor as well as charm. I remember at one point she had crawled a little away from him, and as she sang about the good life they could have together, she shook her butt suggestively. She is very aware of the effect she is creating on Masetto, and by extension, the audience.

This scene overcame a structure that was for me foreign and artificial when I felt that the characters acknowledged the restraints of the form and embraced the humor that these limitations created, or when they did something that contradicted my preconceived ideas about opera as something grand and cultured and settled, to use Levin’s term. In this scene, it was Zerlina’s frank and funny sexuality that helped transport me; in other scenes it was Leporello’s commentary to the audience or Don Giovanni’s overly stylized and grandiose movements, both of which seemed to show that the performance was aware of its own artifice and taking advantage of it to create humor. Unlike Cavell, I felt the performance was most successful when it made me feel that I was in the presence of the audience at the same moment that they are in my presence.

Don Giovanni

So here's your task: without getting too impressionistic, talk about any transport wrought by Don Giovanni. How does opera overcome its structuring and patent artifice? Can it/does it/should it make you feel the way Cavell does for Desdemona? How, exactly, does it impact you?

I had been forewarned by a friend in the musicology program that the director of this production made some distinctly misogynistic choices in the overture. I was unsure of what she meant, seeing as the overture is what it is, but upon seeing the staging it made sense. The director chose to make Donna Anna a liar, a girl-who-cries-rape, as opposed to the more open-ended reading of the libretto. This direction continued throughout, with every woman who was angered at Don Giovanni still very willing to feel him up and generally only regretting his lack of monogamy. [Mis]interpreting the libretto in this way makes it very strange to see Don Giovanni pulled to Hell, since his only crime was murder, but that murder took place during a duel and thusly is at least somewhat socially acceptable.

Of course, I am not writing this post to give a review of the direction. This introduction was necessary, however, to explain the sense of hyperbole and transport I felt from the mirrored backdrop on the stage. My first thought was, why does the virginal Donna Anna have a mirrored bedroom better  fitted, perhaps, to a Venetian bordello. I then realized, the only character who truly utilized the mirror was Don Giovanni himself. I thought, "Oh my, the mirror isn't real, it is a reflection of Don Giovanni's world-view, that everything exists to serve his pleasure, to reflect back to him whatever he desires the world to be.

This is perhaps the closest I came to any transport during this production, because it took me to an entirely separate interpretive mindset. After I had the mirror thought, Don Giovanni became an unreliable narrator. Does he truly seduce women, or is this just how he chooses to see his actions? This meta-narrative of sociopath narcissism that I created in my head thanks to the mirrors took the opera, at least for brief spurts, beyond the artifice of the broadly comic, often cliche performance and rewrote the presented story, from that of a indefinably and undeniably sexually attracted Lothario, to that of a self-centered, possibly insane aristocrat.

Don Giovanni Post, Courtney

To consider the question of transport in regards to Don Giovanni, I would like to consider two of the male characters within the opera: Leporello and Don Giovanni. From the first two scenes in the play, the seduction of Donna Anna and the murder of her father, I found the contrast in the acting styles of the two men to be extreme. Leporello was the comedian and was good at it. He played a slapstick, bumbling character that seemed humanly awkward. Don Giovanni, by contrast, played his character in a highly stylized manner, constantly waving his arms about in grand professions of love and vanity. He played the idea of grand desire as opposed to the actual human experience of it. This seems to be an instance of Levin’s concept of the unsettling of opera—the possibility for wildly divergent acting styles to be placed side by side. What was especially interesting to me in this divergence though, was the way that acting style highlighted or overtook the centrality of the voice of the opera singer. In the case of Leporello, I found myself focusing on his acting and paying less attention to the qualities of his voice. With Don Giovanni I found the opposite to be true, because his acting was so stylized I was able to see him as an “opera singer” and attune myself to the quality of his voice. I admit that I am not an opera aficionado, and so there is a possibility that this may partially be attributable to the actual quality of the singer’s voice. Yet whether or not Don Giovanni was actually a more skilled singer or not, his acting style had a direct impact on the way I heard his voice.

Leporello was able to transport me and Don Giovanni was not, yet I find myself unable to say which is better for the aims of the opera. This brought me to the question: what do we mean when we say someone is a good actor, when someone plays his role well? Is voice a part of acting within the opera? Outside of the opera, I would not hesitate to say that voice is an integral part of acting, and so why would this be any different for the opera? In this case though, I find that neither is better or worse, but instead that they are evidence of different goals or aims of the opera singer, and I find it fascinating that they are able to coexist onstage without a total breakdown of the opera itself. Thus, transport, for me, was not a totalizing experience but could be had alongside theatricality (in Davis’s definition of the word).

Class Notes- Levin and Auslander (Iris)

Amy- We’re still waiting to hear from people re: Chicago. Email Amy ASAP. It’ll be fun! Jennifer will let us use her awesome house. The plan is to drive up Friday for evening show and matinee on Saturday, either leave Saturday evening or Sunday. There will be transportation options.

Ellen- Let’s start with Levin, connect continuities between the two readings. What is Levin putting forth? What is the radical act, the nature of the intervention? Are any of these key terms useful for our purposes?

Jennifer- We always struggle for a definition in this class, It seems like Levin is trying to pin down the meaning of the word “unsettled”.

Amy- Before that, let’s start with defining “dramaturgy” and “mise en scene”.

Prompt: Course Blog 8: Cavell and performance

Tuesday's blog is an opportunity for us to think about 'transport.'  Let's recall (or anticipate) that...

• For Levin, opera performance should be unsettling--that is, irreducible to a singular, homogenous experience--and yet he characterizes its uptake as transporting
• For Auslander, glam rock involves hyperbole, construction, and artifice, yet its public is made up of fans that don't differ much in their habits of consumption from fans of more "authentic" musical forms
• For Cavell, tragedy is agonizing for the emotional involvement/investment it provokes, notwithstanding the fact that it is only a representation. 

So here's your task: without getting too impressionistic, talk about any transport wrought by Don Giovanni. How does opera overcome its structuring and patent artifice? Can it/does it/should it make you feel the way Cavell does for Desdemona? How, exactly, does it impact you?

Please be specific. Isolate a moment from the production and see whether you can draw out the relation between the choices made in the mise-en-scène and their emotional upshot.

RE: Shock value (a belated addendum to Dorothy and Derek)

The New York Times is publishing a two week exploration of the value of shock in art (it began last week in the Sunday Times).

Here is a link to the blog version of the discussion, which continues this weekend:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/arts/art-shock.html#/#readers2

It's worth a look, I think, particularly as an active contrast to the kind of spectatorial experience Cavell writes about.

Response Post - Jess (GLAM!)

First off, I'm continually amazed and impressed at everyone's comments, thoughts, and interpretations of our readings. So, yay us!

Now, on to the task at hand: glam rock + opera.

Iris' introduction of the confounding and mesmerizing Lady Gaga is particularly appropriate to our discussion. Do we ever see Stefani Germanotta? Or is all we see Lady Gaga, La Gaga, Gaga, and various iterations of her persona? In this, I'm seeing another parallel in a recent Vanity Fair article about President Obama, and how he remarks that "one of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That's not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you." There are tons of links between incredibly disparate areas via performing, theatricality, character, and spectacle. The presidency is an overwhelming mishmash of history, tradition, spectacle, performance - - - you name it. The president's image is critical to the public's understanding of the person and the office; Obama talks about only choosing between gray or navy suits each day, but why those two? Why not a finely tailored suit in aubergine? That would be downright un-presidential. They are relegated to "safe" colors of black, navy and gray with tie colors in the red, blue or neutral families. No president would ever be allowed to surface in a pink silk tie. That would not only subvert the masculine power of the office (a problem in and of itself), but it would confound the audience/public. 

Glam rock, opera, and the presidency are dependent on image and spectacle. Glam rock subverts, opera and the presidency conserve/uphold. I think the biggest thing we're asked to forget, as spectators, is the inherent humanity of the performer. They are transformed into objects to be consumed, or embodiments of power/sexuality/fabulousness/etc. It's like with my ramblings on monuments - - - they become monuments themselves on stage in view of the public. Their peculiarities, especially their faults, are hidden from view (I could expound on how public figures lose their monumentality, but that's another story altogether). 

Class Notes, 18 September 2012: Discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird

Prefatory remarks: 

Ellen--We will be going to the Lilly Library for class on Oct. 11th.  Before then, however, we will be put into groups (3-4 people) and will visit the library ahead of time in order to set aside materials that we would like to look at during our class visit.

Amy--Chicago Trip; send emails regarding availability and interest for Oct. 12-13th.

Mockingbird Discussion:

Kelly--Issue of the child actors; the most compelling scenes were those only with children; relates this point to Davis's discussion of avoiding realism.

Whitney--theatre, archive, and memory; how does the performance deal with memory and the performance of this memory; take the mob scene as an example--this scene implicates the audience, at least for those seemed in the lower sections; this implication of the audience wasn't as palpable for those sitting in the balcony; Adult Scout as temporally separate from the action on stage--indicative of multiple layers of narrative temporality.

Jennifer--Adult Scout and her physical distance from the other actors/characters; she never touches anyone on stage; shares Whitney's sentiment regarding the mob scene--different experience for those seated in the balcony.

Sara--implications of actors coming from the audience; in this case, it was a good performative decision for reasons of affect; questions Adult Scout's absence or lack of stage presence during the trail scene.

Amy--How could Adult Scout been made more visible during this scene and how would this effect the meaning or audience reception?

Sara--Adult Scout could've been a spectator at the trail--this would have made more scene given her position in this historical setting.

Justin--Adult Scout was in the balcony.

Sara--This reinforces the idea that we're seeing a memory play.

Whitney--noticed fluctuation of Adult Scout's role as framer of the stage's narrative; often the stage narrative is an issue of personal memory, but the trail scene becomes an issue of collective memory.

Ellen--trail scene is a moment when theatre (this play, in particular) isn't constrained by the traditional frames of memory narrative.

Courtney--Adult Scout's narration controls or influences the audiences affective response to certain scenes; this is often problematic since, otherwise, we might be inclined to feel a different way about what is transpiring on stage.

Dorothy--the play only worked for me from the angle of the single perspective; it is easier to surrender to the on-stage events knowing that they are being shaped by Adult Scout's memory.

Whitney--issue of multiple authorial voices in any theatre performance; is this idea of the single perspective present a barrier to Davis's understanding of theatricality?

Amy--what does it suggest about this play that we are led to share Scout's perspective? Adult Scout isn't entirely necessary--what does her presence add to our understanding of young Scout's perspective?

Jennifer--issue of contextualization; guides our understanding of this time period

Whitney--Scout's perspective puts us in a similar position of childlike innocence; perhaps it is easier for use to be in Scout's position.

Iris--Original title was "Atticus"; advantage of explain racism and social injustice through the eyes of a child.

Kelly--Adult Scout's didn't explain of the historical aspects of the racism; her narration just seemed unnecessary.

Jenna--Adult Scout wasn't offering a different perspective from young Scout; older Scout would often mimic young Scout; impression of re-experiencing rather than of learning.

Derek--Adult Scout's narration and overwhelming nostalgia for childhood and father; older Scout's narration during times when young Scout wasn't on stage doesn't contradict this issue of nostalgia and reminiscence.

Amy--Space of the event: where was it and why was it there? Phenomenology of this space, of the event and its production--how do these effect or influence the play's meaning or our reception of meaning?

Dorothy--the "event-ness" of the play--the "fancy" atmosphere; young girls got dressed up in their finest to see a play about violent racism and rape; the young girls in the audience laughed at the word "rape" when Scout asked her father what the word meant;  the young girl's simply responded to the usage of a word that is taboo whereas the adults in the audience responded to the humor behind Scout's ingenuousness.

Amy--let's go back to the event space; where else could this play be performed? And how would different space influence the meaning?

Sara--the theatre's "theatre-ness"; proscenium frame and cushioned seats.  This frame allows for an implicit recognition of temporal distance, allowing for this event to be a family outing in spite of its serious themes and events.

Jenna--could've been performed with a thrust space, instead.

Whitney--the refreshment stand; for mollifying the children; makes the space somehow child-friendly.

Dorothy--racial implications of the refreshment stand; finds the idea of a black child eating candy and popcorn during the same event a bit grotesque.

Sara--Dorothy's comment is a valid issue; wonders if a black child would identify more with Tom or with Scout.

Dorothy--personal experience has led her to believe a black child would probably identify with Tom.

Derek--we're treading of the issue of what we, as adults, do and do not want children to see.  But is this really reflective of children's affective capacities or of our own discomforts with the topics at hand?

Dorothy--this brings up the issue of what is a "good" representation of race; is this play even a good representation of black subjects? Who would benefit more for this play, white children or black children? This play seems to be doing more a service for a white audience than a black audience.

Whitney--the theatre space allowed for or promoted the assumed innocence of the child spectators; this might not have been the most engaging space in this sense.

Amy--the play was written to be consumed by a white, liberal audience and to assuage white, liberal guilt. There isn't any evidence to show that this play was meant to be anything other than a consumable object for white liberals.

Derek--it would be ideal to contrast this play with a work written from a black perspective, but it is still a good prospect to teach this novel or see this play.

Amy--wants us to integrate evidence of the live, theatrical experience into our critiques; what counts as evidence? And how can we integrate this evidence into our critical, intellectual, and political analyses?

Whitney--program insert advertised a local child actor playing the role of Scout--is this girl a local celebrity?  Will people actually come back to see her single performance for the reason that she's played a few other roles in the past?

Sara--people in the audience were certainly discussing the child actors in terms of their pervious performances.

Jess--idea of casting children for the adult roles; this wouldn't work; their needs to be the age difference between the child and adult roles manifested by the body difference of the relative actors.

Kelly--comparison with How I Learned to Drive.

Ming--we need the juxtaposition of the adult and child bodies on stage

Jess--Hair color of the actor playing Scout; why a blond actress?  What is the symbolic significance of blond hair?

Jennifer--liked the casting of Boo Radley.

Dorothy--agrees with Jennifer; trope of the gentle giant; his performance was nuanced and presented an interesting association with the child roles.

Blog Response 7, Courtney

I was interested in Iris’s and Cody’s blog posts for these readings, especially in relation to the Auslander reading. The three-part structure that Auslander lays out and that Iris probed—person, persona, and character—seems very relevant to Cody’s discussion of the problems that he had with the authenticity of the performances of queerness. The positioning of the person, the “real” David Jones (David Bowie) or the “real” Marc Feld (Marc Bolan), seems to be the problem here, and the fact that the go under assumed names is significant. What Cody’s post makes clear is the way that the real person is radically divorced from the persona in the case of the glam rock performer, I would argue especially in these cases of celebrity, and the way that this division has been historically ignored in the cases of those participants in drag subcultures. It seems to me that the reason that David Bowie or Marc Bolan would have not been under the same kind of physical threat as those who performed drag or queer identities in other spaces also has something to do with our cultural willingness to separate a performance identity from a personal identity. Thus, the “bodily risks” that Cody speaks of were prevented by both literal policing forces (bodyguards, crowd control) and a cultural policing of identity layering. It seems that the violence erupted in the cases of “everyday queer subjects and drag performers” because of an inability to see these people as performers of identity. The person and the persona are read as one in the same, and if these did not conform to standards of identity, violence ensued. Identity distance seems as important here as physical distance.