Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T15:42:27.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Hearing Voices in Adès’s Operas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2021

Edward Venn
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Philip Stoecker
Affiliation:
Hofstra University, New York
Get access

Summary

The innovative ways in which the human voice is used in performing Thomas Adès’s operas Powder Her FaceThe Tempest and The Exterminating Angel, have ensured sustained critical attention on voice and vocality in these works. There has, however, been little academic scholarship on the role of the voice in Adès’s operas to date. Reconciling hermeneutic approaches to voice, phenomenal song and narrative with a more recent material turn in voice studies, this chapter will discuss a range of interpretatively salient moments in Adès’s operas, in which the sound and activity of the resonant singing voice itself is used as a narrative parameter independently of what these operatic voices have to say. It aims to interrogate the play between voice as embodied sonority and more metaphorical conceptions of voice as vehicle for meaning, as a way to access and understand traits in the relationship between surface and structure, and the use of musical techniques for semantic ends. In doing so, this chapter provides a long-overdue theoretically grounded hearing of the sonorous voices in Adès’s music and of the performers that capture our attention from the operatic stage.

Type
Chapter
Information
Thomas Adès Studies , pp. 213 - 232
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×