Yuval Sharon - "A New Philosophy of Opera" - David Rubenstein Forum
Yuval Sharon will discuss his book A New Philosophy of Opera. A Q&A and signing will follow the event.
At the David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago
Yuval Sharon is creating an unconventional body of work that seeks to expand the operatic form. He is the founding Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles, a company devoted to new and experimental opera that has brought opera into unconventional spaces. Sharon was honored with a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater. In August 2024 he was chosen to direct the Metropolitan Opera’s next staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle. He is currently serving as the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director at the Detroit Opera and as the inaugural Global Solutions Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium. At this talk he will discuss the ideas he explores in his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (Liveright, 2024).
About the Book: Known as opera's "disrupter-in-residence," director Yuval Sharon has never adhered to the art form's conventions. In his many productions in both the United States and Europe, he constantly challenges the perception of opera as aloof by urging, among other things: performing operas in "non-places," such as parking lots; encouraging the use of amplification; and shuffling the traditional structure of classic works, like performing Puccini's La bohème in reverse order, ending not with the tubercular heroine Mimi's death but with her first falling in love.
With A New Philosophy of Opera, Sharon has crafted a radical and refreshing book that can act as an introduction to the art form for the culturally curious, or as a manifesto for his fellow artists. In an engaging style that ranges from the provocative to the personal, Sharon offers a 360-degree view of the art form, from the audience experience to the artist's process; from its socially conscious potential to its economic reality; and from its practical to its emotional and spiritual dimensions.
Surveying the role of opera in the United States and drawing on his experiences from Berlin to Los Angeles, Sharon lays out his vision for an "anti-elite opera" that celebrates the imagination and challenges the status quo. With an illustrated and unconventional history of the art form (not following a straight line but tracing a fantastical "time-curve") weaving throughout the book, Sharon resists the notion of the opera as "dying" and instead portrays it as a glorious chaos constantly being reborn and reshaped.
With its advocacy of opera as an "enchanted space" and its revolutionary message, A New Philosophy of Opera is itself a work of art--a living book with profound philosophical implications--that will stand the test of time.
Related Titles
Known as opera's "disrupter-in-residence," director Yuval Sharon has never adhered to the art form's conventions. In his many productions in both the United States and Europe, he constantly challenges the perception of opera as aloof by urging, among other things: performing operas in "non-...