Staging Scores: Devising Contemporary Performances from Classical Music

What is it about?

This co-authored article, published by the Open Library of Humanities, was selected for the journal’s special collection entitled ‘Representing Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century’. The article draws on the authors’ extensive experience of making score-based theatre and addresses the question of how contemporary performance practice can employ alternative dramaturgical processes to integrate musical and musicological analyses as significant components of the theatrical event.

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Photo by Samuel Sianipar on Unsplash

Photo by Samuel Sianipar on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article offers several original graphic scores (as translations of Verdi’s opera) and demonstrates how these were generated and applied as part of Traviata’s devising process. It outlines an innovative methodological approach to using music scores in performance and expands upon current discourses surrounding ‘Musicality in Theatre’ (Roesner, 2014). The article offers an alternative solution to staging classical music by focussing on the structural complexity of the operatic score, providing a unique example of contemporary performance practice that challenges and strengthens the interconnectedness of music and theatre. The article informs future creative processes and proposes new praxis-based models for staging scores in ways that differ from conventional performances, leading to new ways of understanding, representing, and engaging with classical music and challenging its contemporary cultural representation, resonance and relevance to audiences today.