Singing Actors and Dancing Singers

By looking at two recent and widely recognized productions of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (by choreographer Sasha Waltz, Berlin 2005, and theatre-director Sebastian Nübling, Basel 2006) this article discusses three main aspects: 1. Genre: Coming from a Tanztheater (Waltz) and a Sprechtheater (Nübling) background, both directors renegotiate conventions of the operatic genre, and consciously evade clear allocations in pursuit of a new and challenging experience for both the performers and their audience. 2. Physicality: Both productions place the performers’ bodies at the forefront of the mise en scène’s attention – they re-map the singing, dancing, acting body by questioning conventions and expectations commonly found in the production and reception process. 3. Adaptation: Both productions take unconventional liberties by adapting in a domain, where notions of Werktreue (fidelity to the original work or score) still reigns. Adopting ideas from Nicholas Cook and Mikhail Bakhtin, I will argue that the conceptual, musical and theatrical implications of both productions indicate a re-negotiation of the social and performative relevance of operatic performance.