Critical Writing Index

Wagnervideo

by Christopher Morris

The Opera Quarterly, Spring 2011, v. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 234-255

Toronto critic Peter Goddard recently wrote of "opera's video projection fetish," quoting director Astrid Janson on the "fashionable" use of "large projections, particularly in Wagner." Arguably, the ultimate product of this "fetish" has been The Tristan Project, a production of Wagner's three-act Handlung directed by Peter Sellars with a commissioned full-length video by Bill Viola. Morris explores the cultural source of this new collaboration between the opera and video, arguing that "their overlaps—spaces and crossings where traditional media and genre boundaries blur and even collapse—offers so much to opera studies".

ITEM 2011.081 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Tristan und IsoldeRichard Wagner

The Tristan ProjectBill Viola

The Tristan ProjectPeter Sellars

Philip Glass

Slavoj Žižek