scholarly journals Performance as Transformation: The Laughing Songs of “Death in Venice” in Literature, Film, and Opera

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janina Müller

This paper takes as its starting point a scene from the fifth chapter of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (1912). While Venice is threatened by an outbreak of cholera, a group of Neapolitan street musicians plays in front of Aschenbach, Tadzio, and the other hotel guests. The leader of the band—a buffonesque guitarist-singer with red hair and a wrinkled, emaciated face—is an ominous figure whose facetious, sexually charged performance eventually turns into blatant mockery of the audience, whom he infects with his contagious laughter. Using the concept of “performance as transformation” (Erika Fischer-Lichte) as a lens through which to investigate the filmic and operatic adaptations of the scene in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1970) and Benjamin Britten’s eponymous opera (1973), I focus on the various renditions of the laughing song to trace the particular transformative power it unfolds across media. Both adaptations use music to ironically comment on Aschenbach’s infatuation. Yet, their approach to the scene at large is distinct from one another: While the opera turns the performance into an interiorized space of moral interrogation, the film evokes the sound of the past through the insertion of pre-existent popular songs from the time, including Berardo Cantalamessa’s Neapolitan laughing song “’A risa.” As I argue, the latter served as a model for the uproarious comical number described by Mann which thus constitutes a “phono-graphic” adaptation itself. Finally, I discuss the recurrences of demonic laughter throughout the film as part of Visconti’s intertextual strategy to create motivic relationships between Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus (1947).

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Miranda Damasceno

The constitution of the crystal image corresponds to the most fundamental operation of time. In order to do so, it is necessary for time to separate, arise or happen, in two decimetric spurts, of which one of them makes pass the whole present and the other conserves all the past. Time consists precisely in this split, it is the one we see in a crystal. Crystal is the perpetual foundation of time. According to the perspective of the French thinker Gilles Deleuze, in Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti gives us to see the crystalline images according to their own decomposition. This is present throughout his work. In this film, we can see this decomposition, for example, through the plague that devastates Venice or even through the revelation that something arrived too late. When the character of the musician sees the young Tadzio, he has the vision of what lacked in his work: sensual beauty. The too late conditions the work of art and conditions its success, for the sensuous and sensual unity of nature with man is the essence of art par excellence, inasmuch as it is of its nature to occur too late!


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-100
Author(s):  
Christoph Ulf

Sofia Voutsaki has developed a very stimulating line of thought in her paper. In my view, one of the laudable traits of this paper is that it is characterized by the same tripartite structure which actually lies behind each scientific argument. Consciously or not, all of us start with a theory or a set of assumptions; we then proceed to methods in order to achieve our goal, i.e. to arrive at transparent interpretations of the past through empirical analysis. The analysis of empirical data is the end of the process, not its starting point, even if many people think it would be the beginning of our daily research work. The claim that the use of theory is unavoidable is often denied. Sofia Voutsaki's goal, as I understand it, is to make an attempt to narrow the gap between, on the one hand, mainly theory-driven research and, on the other, empirical analysis which is thought to be free from the unnecessary ‘burden’ of theory.


2009 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yigal Bloch

AbstractThis article takes issue with the theory that those Biblical Hebrew poems, which show an extensive use of verbal forms belonging to the short prefix-conjugation (Northwest Semitic yaqtul) to signify complete situations in the past without the conjunction w-, were composed at an early date (c. 13th-10th centuries B.C.E.). The article takes as its starting point the fundamental discussion by David A. Robertson (1972) and argues that Robertson's neglect of the Masoretic spelling and vocalization, which often help to distinguish between the short and long prefix-conjugations in Biblical Hebrew, is unjustified. Then, it is shown that although in those biblical poems, which are commonly identified as early, short prefixed verbal forms are used to signify complete situations in the past more frequently without the conjunction w- than with it, the use of such forms with the conjunction w- (in the wayyiqtol construction) is also attested in those poems. And on the other hand, a similar pattern of use of short prefixed verbal forms to signify complete situations in the past—more frequently without the conjunction w- than with it—appears also in two poetic texts that are commonly dated to the 6th century B.C.E.: Isa. 41:1-5 and Ps. 44.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
José Duarte

Road stories are significant cultural objects that “provide a ready space for [the] exploration” (Cohan and Hark 1997, 2) of different landscapes, contributing to the encounter of the traveller with him/herself or with the Other. These cultural encounters offer the opportunity both for inner reflection upon the nation in which the protagonists travel. Such is the case of the Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson), who embark on a journey in India, seeking spiritual enlightenment from the problems of the past. The confrontation with the foreign Other will not only put into perspective a changed notion of the Indian nation but also their true purpose in life. Based upon the idea of the transformative power of journeys, and considering The Darjeeling Limited as a road movie, this article analyzes the brothers’ awakening as they travel deeper into the Indian landscape to emerge with a renewed sense of self.


Spatium ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 77-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marijana Pantic

Some differences in territorial organization between Serbian and EU countries are obvious. The level of centralization and tradition in systems for implementation of ideas are differently back- grounded. However, these are the most important facts for the opportunity to realize Learning Region as a concept of the European future. There is no part of space that should be considered as unchangeable and the way to a better position and Learning Region concept implementation of each region in Serbia in practice should lead towards few necessary steps and further. The starting point is awareness of the facts on the creation of Subotica region as it is at present. The healthy future of each region is provided by looking back in the past and learning from the history. The other important thing is bench marking- learning on the positive and successful experiences of other regions, and finally, making its own concept of Learning Region adapted to local surrounding and true need of local people. Some experiences, suggestions and comparisons will be made in this case study, in relation to one of the Serbian municipalities nearest t to EU neighboring countries in a territorial way. .


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Enrique Gutiérrez Rubio

AbstractThe starting point for this study is that (the majority of) conventional figurative units (CFUs) are conceptual in nature and that they somehow record and preserve the knowledge and even worldview of diverse cultures. The aim of this paper is to take a first step towards answering the question whether it is true not only that phraseology preserves the way a given culture understands the world (or understood it in the past), but if it works the other way round, i.e. if people using/knowing CFUs involving stereotypes - in this case, Czech idioms and collocations regarding nations and ethnic groups - tend to extend these stereotypes and attitudes beyond the linguistic sphere. For this purpose a survey questionnaire was created, by means of which the stereotypes underlying a varied sample of 13 Czech CFUs were related to the prejudices of the respondents


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Brenk

The article describes the main sources of contemporary volunteering, i.e. the historical and social context of changes in the perception of voluntary work in the past hundred years. The year 1918 was established as the starting point, i.e. the beginning of the creation of a system of social assistance (welfare) in Poland within the resurgence of the state, the volunteers of which (then called volunteers) were a significant and distinctive element. Moreover, at the same time (1920) the foundations of modern international volunteering were laid, the father of which is commonly referred to as the Swiss pacifist Pierre Cérésole. Subsequent turning points are marked by the times of the People’s Republic of Poland (1944–1989), when all social activities acquired an unequivocally ideological meaning and undertaking such work was associated with expressing support for the ruling system and its political authorities. On the other hand, the times of the Third Polish Republic that began with social changes in 1989, brought the necessity to create the structures of Polish volunteering almost from the very beginnings.


Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


Author(s):  
Prakash Rao

Image shifts in out-of-focus dark field images have been used in the past to determine, for example, epitaxial relationships in thin films. A recent extension of the use of dark field image shifts has been to out-of-focus images in conjunction with stereoviewing to produce an artificial stereo image effect. The technique, called through-focus dark field electron microscopy or 2-1/2D microscopy, basically involves obtaining two beam-tilted dark field images such that one is slightly over-focus and the other slightly under-focus, followed by examination of the two images through a conventional stereoviewer. The elevation differences so produced are usually unrelated to object positions in the thin foil and no specimen tilting is required.In order to produce this artificial stereo effect for the purpose of phase separation and identification, it is first necessary to select a region of the diffraction pattern containing more than just one discrete spot, with the objective aperture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Perrine Moran

Many couples who come for therapy are struggling with separating from unconscious phantasies and beliefs that enmesh each partner with the other, resulting in states that popular songs powerfully epitomise. While this borderline experience is common and functional in the early stages of being in love its persistence paralyses the development of the relationship. Facing separation from and loss of illusion is a challenge couple therapists are often asked to help with. The argument is illustrated by a case, and by references to some of Cole Porter’s best known songs.


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