Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

3 results

  • 4 - ‘Oh brave new Caliban’

  • Edited by Edward Venn, University of Leeds, Philip Stoecker, Hofstra University, New York
  • Book:
    Thomas Adès Studies
    Published online:
    18 November 2021
    Print publication:
    25 November 2021, pp 72-92

  • Summary

    This chapter investigates Adès’s 2003–4 opera The Tempest in the context of postcolonial theory, arguing that the adaptation considerably transforms the statuses of Caliban, Ariel, and Prospero. I situate the opera within major strands of postcolonial thought of the past half-century, focussing especially on Caliban as a way to explore themes of resistance, identity and diaspora. Identifying the opera’s transformations in the libretto, I then explore how both text and Adès’s music work as ambiguous signifiers of political subtexts, centring on ideas of servitude and power. Touching also on the different aesthetics of the several contrasting productions of the opera, I tie together these different areas to put this operatic Tempest in dialogue with the extensive corpus of critical approaches to the play in literature, film and theatre. I conclude by suggesting that it can be productively analysed in the context of legacies of colonialism and empire in twenty-first-century Britain.