In this innovative book, Gundula Kreuzer argues for the foundational role of technologies in the conception, production, and study of nineteenth-century opera. She shows how composers increasingly incorporated novel audiovisual effects in their works and how the uses and meanings of the required apparatuses changed through the twentieth century, sometimes still resonating in stagings, performance art, and popular culture today. Focusing on devices (which she dubs “Wagnerian technologies”) intended to amalgamate opera’s various media while veiling their mechanics, Kreuzer offers a practical counternarrative to Wagner’s idealist theories of total illusionism. At the same time, Curtain, Gong, Steam’s multifaceted exploration of the three titular technologies repositions Wagner as catalyst more than inventor in the history of operatic production. With its broad chronological and geographical scope, this book deepens our understanding of the material and mechanical conditions of historical operatic practice as well as of individual works, both well known and obscure.

About the Author

Gundula Kreuzer is Associate Professor of Music at Yale University. She is the author of the award-winning Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich and editor of Verdi’s instrumental chamber music for The Works of Giuseppe Verdi.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Note on Presentation
Introduction: Opera, Staging, Technologies

1. Wagner’s Venusberg
2. Curtain
3. Gong
4. Steam

Epilogue: Wagnerian Failure
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Reviews

“Kreuzer considers operas, pre-operas, post-operas (films), and meta-operas (Ring cycle satires) while moving through past and present with ease. …Her approach is original. She pulls Wagner down from the heavens among the gods and makes him mortal—a flawed, infuriating and curious creature who worried about receipts while cursing at the riggers.”

— Times Literary Supplement

“Kreuzer offers an innovative and staggeringly detailed examination of the intertwined developments of opera as an art form and the technical machines that brought it to life. Her investigation sheds light on how composers, from the nineteenth century onward, sought to incorporate old and emerging stage technologies into their operas in various ways to achieve ever-grander artistic ends, no one more so than Wagner.”
— The Wagner Society

"Gundula Kreuzer has written an imaginative, highly original, and stunningly researched book. It is not just about Wagner, but is instead a minihistory of selected technologies employed by European theater going as far back as the baroque and right up to our own time, where Wagner serves as a fulcrum and point of constant reference."
— German Studies Review

"Kreuzer’s study combines meticulous historical research and critical analysis, which makes for innovative, exciting work."
— College Music Symposium

“Exemplary in the way it allies meticulous historical evidence with operatic interpretation, this is one of the most exciting books on nineteenth-century opera to appear in decades, and one that will become a touchstone for further work in this field.”—Carolyn Abbate, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University

“At last Gundula Kreuzer has given operatic technologies a voice of their own. Wagner’s secret machines and hidden wires are themselves the actors, telling of their Baroque origins and their reincarnation as part of twenty-first-century immersive media, particularly in new productions of the Ring. A fabulously well-researched contribution to Wagner scholarship and a landmark in theater and opera studies.”—John Deathridge, Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music, King’s College London

“Kreuzer’s book combines the sustained sweep of a well-researched study with the conceptual boldness of an essay; it is both learned and brilliantly argued. By drawing on diverse theoretical sources with roots in the work of Benjamin and Heidegger as well as on the current historically informed discourse about technology, the detailed case studies set an exemplary standard for the critical analysis of opera staging.”—Stephen Hinton, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

“Kreuzer’s innovative and exciting approach yields many fresh insights into canonic works while also throwing revealing light on rather obscure corners of operatic history. This original book will be read with profit and pleasure not only by musicologists, but also by historians of theater, technology, and science, as well as anybody interested in the connections between art, culture, and society.”—Emanuele Senici, Professor of Music, University of Rome "La Sapienca"

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews