Cambridge Opera Journal

  • Cambridge Opera Journal (2003), 15 : pp 83-106
  • Copyright © 2003 Cambridge University Press
  • DOI: DOI:10.1017/S0954586703000831 (About DOI)
  • Published online: 02 September 2003

Table of Contents - 2003 - Volume 15, Issue 01  


Regular Articles

Prospero's isle and the sirens' rock

ARMAN  SCHWARTZ 

Abstract

Luciano Berio's Un re in ascolto is based on a complex web of sources – writings by Calvino, Barthes, Kafka, Auden, Shakespeare and others – themselves intricately interrelated through games of citation and revision. Linking all these texts is a scene in which a male artist is confronted by a voice outside of his control. This scene is re-enacted – unexpectedly – at the climax of Berio's work. In this new context the unruly voice sounds like a revenant from a form long presumed dead: pure opera and absolute madness.


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