editorial 10.04

Silent singers
While opera choreography was once an intermezzo, a voiceless spectacle dashing around the stage, a more or less symbolically illustrative chorus such as was recently demonstrated at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games (p. 8), today choreographers are increasingly in control of the opera - Reinhild Hofmann, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Rosamund Gilmore, Emio Greco and soon also Sasha Waltz and Karole Armitage – with a practice that hasn't been so en vogue since the baroque era. The musical pieces of that time were also always dance dramas in which particularly the baroque chorus was treated with brilliant frivolity: hunters, farmers and soldiers appeared in ensembles, dancing festively, as a foil for a nobility which sought self-expression in the opera. It was not until the Romantic era that choral and individual scenes were balanced. Only then, choreography stepped back for direction and the expansive movements of the chorus gave way to more individual characterisation. From then on, ballet silently imitated this bourgeois process of individualisation and major dancers just as silently took on big roles, such as Pina Bausch in Boris Blacher's 1973 silent "Yvonne, Princesse of Burgund".

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Pina Bausch started giving her dancers a voice and letting them speak for themselves after "Yvonne". When Jan Fabre, together with Eugeniusz Knapik, extended his first ballet (1987's "Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas") into an opera himself ("The Minds of Helena Troubleyn" 1990) it finally became clear that opera can be convincingly mastered by choreographers, and not just serve as a lucrative sideline.

Another thing enjoying a revival is the critical understanding of music, as commented on by Joachim Schlömer in this issue. This is particularly welcomed by artists such as Irish composer Michael Weaver and musical partners Gerhard Bohners, Roland Pfrengle. Both contend that the way ahead does not just lead to opera but beyond – to a new kind of physically reflective music theatre. We are happy to follow them.

The Editors