| dc.description.abstract | Based on an ethnographic study of an international opera company, the paper
reports a number of aspects of preparation, rehearsal and performance. It
documents the creation of operatic productions as everyday, mundane work. Two
themes are presented. First is the theme of bricolage. Starting from the concrete
bricolage of creating artefacts in the ‘props’ department, the paper extends the
metaphor to capture the dramaturgical work whereby cultural bric-à-brac is
assembled in the process of creating an opera production through the rehearsal
period. Second, this leads to a specific consideration of how vocabularies of motive
are invoked by directors and performers in order to make sense of the narratives
and characters of the opera. Motivational interpretation is shown to be a form of
cultural bricolage itself. | en_GB |
