-
Currently reading everything I can find about "... (Iphigenia)", the new opera by @EspeSpalding & Wayne Shorter. Wish I could experience the production! Just reading about it is rich source of reflection for a historian.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +3 🙂
-
ICYMI: the opera is based on the Greek myth of Iphigenia, who was sacrificed (or maybe not?) by her father Agamemnon to propitiate the god Artemis before the Trojan War. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IphigeniaOn twitter.com
Mood -2 🙁
-
In the libretto @EspeSpalding creates 6 different Iphigenias. Each tells her own story, something that the myth's focus on Iphigenia as victim forecloses. One is "Iphigenia of the Open Tense," who is not sacrificed & improvises a new ending, breaking the myth's traumatic cycle.Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -8 🙁
-
Thinking about resonances between the notion of an "Open Tense" story and Hartman's "critical fabulation." Her challenge to historians to write stories of the silenced that don't reproduce the terms of the stories that silenced them.Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -3 🙁
-
But also the challenge of historians (writers of the "Past Tense") who are accountable to evidence. How to decide when the sources make it possible to say, "This is the most truthful story" of "Iphigenia," & when the sources require writing several possible Iphigenias at once.Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -3 🙁
-
And how do these choices relate to the hope that the story we tell (like the story of "Iphigenia of the Open Tense") can help break the power of the myths that reduce the Iphigenias of the past tense to ciphers & victims?Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -1 🙁
-
Read more about the opera here: harvardmagazine.com/2021/11/esperanza-spalding-opera-iphigeniaPermalink On twitter.com
Mood 0
-
Permalink
On twitter.com
Mood 0
-
Permalink
On twitter.com
Mood 0
-
And of course, the trailer! @EspeSpalding connects the myth to "the struggle between the potency, power & voice of the individual in a context that's more powerful than them." vimeo.com/531426807?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=88997159Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -1 🙁
-
Closing lines of that teaser also bring to mind a certain other production that also engages the question of "who lives, who dies, who tells your story." This opera appears to ask that question with a radically different set of strategies, & refuses a simple answer.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood 0
