Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera: Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun

Yayoi Uno Everett focuses on four operas that helped shape the careers of the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun, which represent a unique encounter of music and production through what Everett calls multimodal narrative. Aspects of production design, the mechanics of stagecraft, and their interaction with music and sung texts contribute significantly to the semiotics of operatic storytelling. Everett’s study draws on Northrop Frye’s theories of myth, Lacanian psychoanalysis via Slavoj Zizek, Linda and Michael Hutcheon’s notion of production, and musical semiotics found in Robert Hatten’s concept of troping in order to provide original interpretive models for conceptualizing new operatic narratives.