About

In the past several decades, the field of opera studies has developed numerous methodological approaches for the analysis and interpretation of the diverse signifying systems to be found within an operatic performance. Nevertheless, these approaches are frequently felt to be incompatible, leading to scholarly engagement that privileges certain aspects of the operatic design over others. The research in this Fellowship is innovative, for it moves beyond the word-music relationships to be found in the score (an approach typical of much traditional opera analysis) to consider theoretically the relationship between the constituent categories of words, music and production. As such, the research acknowledges recent trends in opera studies to give greater weight to opera as event, but goes further by offering innovative readings incorporating all three categories, thereby offering the potential to transform existing academic and public conceptions of operatic meaning construction and its interpretation.

In order to demonstrate the theory, the Fellowship examines the stage works by the British composer Thomas Adès (born 1971). Adès’s operatic aesthetic foregrounds the dynamic interaction of operatic media: he has spoken approvingly of the ‘mysterious thing that happens when you set actions to music: a third shape that emerges when something non-visual like a musical score is acted out by people moving on a stage’. This mystery has perhaps discouraged scholarly enquiry into Adès’s three operas (Powder Her Face (1995), The Tempest  (2004), and The Exterminating Angel (2015)): to date, the literature has focused primarily on his instrumental music. The international critical and commercial success of the operas sets the lack of scholarly engagement into sharp relief. This lacuna is problematic, given the artistic and contextual significance of the operas, for in them Adès transcends the technical and expressive preoccupations of his non-texted outputs, reaching out to comment critically on wider social, cultural and historical issues.

Nevertheless, the range of connections between Adès’s operatic and non-operatic music, both in content and in artistic ambitions, requires that the former is considered in conjunction with the latter. An understanding of Adès’s works for the stage thus necessitates consideration of what links them to his broader output, as well as what makes them distinctive. Adès’s  fiftieth birthday (2021) makes such a sustained enquiry into his music especially timely. This Fellowship thus situates the operas as a central component of Adès work, as part of a broader reframing and re-evaluation of his music and its reception.

The Fellowship has united an international team of experts from the UK and North America – the two territories in which Adès’s music has had most success – to explore the project's key questions from diverse perspectives. These collaborations have culminated in a significant new essay collection that explores the range of Adès’s music, exploring issues around analysis, performance, voice, musical meaning, and cultural implications. Doing so will not only open up Adès scholarship to a significantly wider range of works than have hitherto been discussed, but offer revisionary and novel readings of more familiar pieces. This work will therefore provide a rich and thought provoking contribution to Adès studies (and contemporary music studies more generally), transforming perceptions of the composer, and offering a background against which to pursue more sustained research into the operas themselves.