Michael Ewans
Biographic Data
| ID | 1107182 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Ewans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Ewans |
| SIGNATURE | EWANS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Newcastle Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1707-1337 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Joe Orton’s Loot ; genre, style and vision of society
Mary Beard
Greek Drama in Its Nineteenth-Century Reception
This chapter locates Wagner’s response to Aeschylus in the Ring in the context of the three great theatrical responses to Greek tragedy which preceded his; Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris, Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina, and Grillparzer’s Medea. The relationship of human beings to fate, and the power of the curse, are explored as themes which all four works have in common.
Opera, Emotion and the Antipodes Volume II
Curating Opera
Die Walküre act 3 scene 3, directed by Richard Wagner and Patrice Chéreau
This paper examines staging directions given by Wagner to the singing actors during rehearsals for the first complete performances of The Nibelung’s Ring in 1876 and compares them to the movements and gestures devised by Patrice Chéreau in 1976 for the Centenary cycle. Detailed decisions taken by both directors in staging Die Walküre Act 3 Scene 3, the final confrontation between Wotan and Brünnhilde, are examined; and conclusions are drawn about…
Interpretation and performance
This article revisits the important fields of dispute about The Turn of the Screw – whether the ambiguity about the reality of the ghosts, which is present in Henry James’s novella, carries over into the opera; what the Governess’s state of mind is; what kind of possession of the children is sought by the ghosts; and how the closing moments are to be interpreted. The focus is not just on what the libretto and score can tell us when studied by the…
Nature in Berg’s Wozzeck
This article demonstrates the importance of Nature to both Georg Büchner, author of Woyzeck, and Alban Berg, who adapted the play into the text for his opera Wozzeck. The argument is that Nature in these works is not an indifferent, mechanical force—as it has previously been claimed to be—but an animate power, which interacts with and influences the actions of the protagonist. After outlining Büchner's view of Nature, which underlies the opera, t…
Benjamin Lazarus
The resolution of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw
Joe Orton declared in 1965 that ‘farce is higher than comedy in that it is very close to tragedy’. It was his aim to reanimate the genre of farce and forge it into an instrument of social critique, and this paper shows how he did that. As the title suggests, What the Butler Saw (1969) is a peepshow, in which the audience are voyeurs seeing into an anarchic universe, which exposes the greed, sexuality and violence lying under the surface of middle…
Iphigénie en Tauride and Elektra
This chapter contains section titled: De la Touche's Play and Guillard's Libretto Iphigénie and Oreste Chorus Recognition Hofmannsthal's Elektra Dionysiac Poetics Hofmannsthal and Sophokles Strauss's Elektra: Strategy and Style
Sophocles, Four Dramas of Maturity
Wagner and Aeschylus
The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy
For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to…
Wagner and Aeschylus. The 'Ring' and the 'Oresteia'
Agamemnon at Aulis
Aischylos wrote Agamemnon for exhibition in a theatre. A theatre whose conditions of production almost defy our imagining — how, in particular, were the chorus able to convey the verbal richness and complexity of their lyrics, while at the same time singing and dancing? To a music and choreography of which we know little and nothing respectively, but which yet, however stylized, however unobtrusive, added something to the complexity of the drama.…
The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy
For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to…
Agamemnon at Aulis
Aischylos wrote Agamemnon for exhibition in a theatre. A theatre whose conditions of production almost defy our imagining — how, in particular, were the chorus able to convey the verbal richness and complexity of their lyrics, while at the same time singing and dancing? To a music and choreography of which we know little and nothing respectively, but which yet, however stylized, however unobtrusive, added something to the complexity of the drama.…
Agamemnon at Aulis
Aischylos wrote Agamemnon for exhibition in a theatre. A theatre whose conditions of production almost defy our imagining — how, in particular, were the chorus able to convey the verbal richness and complexity of their lyrics, while at the same time singing and dancing? To a music and choreography of which we know little and nothing respectively, but which yet, however stylized, however unobtrusive, added something to the complexity of the drama.…
Wagner and Aeschylus. The 'Ring' and the 'Oresteia'
Wagner and Aeschylus
The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy
For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to…
Sophocles, Four Dramas of Maturity
Iphigénie en Tauride and Elektra
This chapter contains section titled: De la Touche's Play and Guillard's Libretto Iphigénie and Oreste Chorus Recognition Hofmannsthal's Elektra Dionysiac Poetics Hofmannsthal and Sophokles Strauss's Elektra: Strategy and Style
The resolution of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw
Joe Orton declared in 1965 that ‘farce is higher than comedy in that it is very close to tragedy’. It was his aim to reanimate the genre of farce and forge it into an instrument of social critique, and this paper shows how he did that. As the title suggests, What the Butler Saw (1969) is a peepshow, in which the audience are voyeurs seeing into an anarchic universe, which exposes the greed, sexuality and violence lying under the surface of middle…
Benjamin Lazarus
Interpretation and performance
This article revisits the important fields of dispute about The Turn of the Screw – whether the ambiguity about the reality of the ghosts, which is present in Henry James’s novella, carries over into the opera; what the Governess’s state of mind is; what kind of possession of the children is sought by the ghosts; and how the closing moments are to be interpreted. The focus is not just on what the libretto and score can tell us when studied by the…
Nature in Berg’s Wozzeck
This article demonstrates the importance of Nature to both Georg Büchner, author of Woyzeck, and Alban Berg, who adapted the play into the text for his opera Wozzeck. The argument is that Nature in these works is not an indifferent, mechanical force—as it has previously been claimed to be—but an animate power, which interacts with and influences the actions of the protagonist. After outlining Büchner's view of Nature, which underlies the opera, t…
Die Walküre act 3 scene 3, directed by Richard Wagner and Patrice Chéreau
This paper examines staging directions given by Wagner to the singing actors during rehearsals for the first complete performances of The Nibelung’s Ring in 1876 and compares them to the movements and gestures devised by Patrice Chéreau in 1976 for the Centenary cycle. Detailed decisions taken by both directors in staging Die Walküre Act 3 Scene 3, the final confrontation between Wotan and Brünnhilde, are examined; and conclusions are drawn about…
Greek Drama in Its Nineteenth-Century Reception
This chapter locates Wagner’s response to Aeschylus in the Ring in the context of the three great theatrical responses to Greek tragedy which preceded his; Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris, Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina, and Grillparzer’s Medea. The relationship of human beings to fate, and the power of the curse, are explored as themes which all four works have in common.
Opera, Emotion and the Antipodes Volume II
Curating Opera
Joe Orton’s Loot ; genre, style and vision of society
Mary Beard
Art (16 works) · Literature (9 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (6 works) · History (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (5 works) · Opera (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · History (4 works)