Screening the Operatic Stage

“Screening the Operatic Stage offers the most comprehensive account to date of opera’s representation on screen. Morris’s rich, absorbing narrative stretches across a century and a half, consulting a wide range of sources from media industry publicity to opera fan accounts to the small but growing literature on filmed and televised opera. This is an important, timely, and well-executed study. Scholars, students, and the institution of opera should take its lessons to heart.” * Richard Will, University of Virginia * “Opera has always absorbed all media innovations and even brought them into the world itself. Morris’s book proves that this perspective provides particularly fruitful conditions for opera research, especially under the current conditions of live screening and live streaming, the use of old and new media in the opera house, and the consequences for spectatorship in the opera house or in front of a screen. Morris’s book is an intellectual inspiration.” * Clemens Risi, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nu¨rnberg * “This strikingly original book explores a topic that is absolutely central to our idea and experience of opera. But Morris’s brilliant observations have much to say about all kinds of theater and performance in the context of our hyperdigital world. Screening the Operatic Stage is a must-read for anybody interested in the performing arts today.” * Emanuele Senici, University of Rome La Sapienza *