Homo Cantans: Opera in the Expanded Field

The subject of this research is the transformation and redefinition of opera, the expanding of its field and the stretching of its world. The focus is on recent operatic practice, that takes us beyond the norms and protocols of what is conventionally considered to be an opera. Some of the ways in which opera goes ‘beyond itself’ are: a venue outside the opera house (botanical garden, factory, railway station, swimming pool); the redefinition of conventional operatic voices by the use of technology (the ‘monstrous’ voice, extended vocality, vocaloid opera); the transformation of common operatic media (underwater opera, 3D opera, internet opera, facebook opera); the reinvention of the very notion of ‘the operatic’ in different social and/or economic contexts (Operndorf Afrika, The Bicycle Opera Project); operatic work becoming curatorial practice (for example “And You Must Suffer” (2017) by Pierre Audi or “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” (2020) by Marina Abramovic). The aim of the research is to map these tendencies of ’opera in the expanded field’ and to identify and discuss the theoretical, artistic, economic and even political implications of that practice while showing how the essential human impulse to sing reinvents itself in the age of new media.