Origins and Innovations
Joseph Cone · 2023
Three main topics lead from one to the other in this chapter: (1) theories regarding the evolutionary origin of music and music-drama; (2) the nature of innovation with respect to theater performance and the use of light to direct attention; and (3) a detailed examination of directed attention and other cinematic features of a 2008 movie of Puccini’s La Bohème . In contrast to an individual’s experience in the opera house, in a movie the filmmaker controls what and how the entire audience sees and hears by directing the camera, selecting the view, and framing the action and characters. Viewers tend to follow along naturally, perhaps influenced by the evolution of forms of communication, in which pointing gestures arose early. The apparently automatic operation of mirror neurons and their relevance to audience response are also examined. Beyond cinema, audiences may expect new performance styles or even forms of opera, such as opera created to be heard primarily or only as a video recording, or made solely for Internet viewing, or presented in “virtual reality” or “augmented reality.”