Deviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage

by Axel Englund

The first book to use subversive sexuality as a lens through which to provocatively view opera in the 21st century.

Imagine Armida, Handel’s Saracen sorceress, performing her breakneck coloraturas in a black figure-hugging rubber dress, beating her insubordinate furies into submission with a cane, suspending a captive Rinaldo in chains from the ceiling of her dungeon. Mozart’s peasant girl Zerlina, meanwhile, is tying up and blindfolding her fiancé to seduce him out of his jealousy of Don Giovanni. And how about Wagner’s wizard, Klingsor, ensnaring his choir of flower maidens in elaborate Japanese rope bondage?
 
Opera, it would appear, has developed a taste for sadomasochism. For decades now, radical stage directors have repeatedly dressed canonical operas—from Handel and Mozart to Wagner and Puccini, and beyond—in whips, chains, leather, and other regalia of SM and fetishism. Deviant Opera seeks to understand this phenomenon, approaching the contemporary visual code of perversion as a lens through which opera focuses and scrutinizes its own configurations of sex, gender, power, and violence. The emerging image is that of an art form that habitually plays with an eroticization of cruelty and humiliation, inviting its devotees to take sensual pleasure in the suffering of others. Ultimately, Deviant Opera argues that this species of opera fantasizes about breaking the boundaries of its own role-playing, and pushing its erotic power exchanges from the enacted to the actual.

Genres: Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2020

Reviews

[Alivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I know, this is one of the first books exploring the relationship between contemporary opera staging practices and BDSM (certainly the only one I’m aware of). It’s quite technical, and that’s the main reason I give the book four stars—it will be inaccessible to most lay readers. It presumes a fairly high level of familiarity with the operatic canon, modern stage productions, BDSM and kink culture, and the philosophy of art criticism. Still, I muddled through, drawing on my own background knowledge, and enjoyed sinking my teeth into this exploration of two seemingly disparate phenomena.
The strongest through-line in England’s book is what he calls the “actuality effect”: opera and BDSM both play with the boundary between reality and fiction, teasing out strong emotions in the audience and performers alike. Other connections include the overt sensuality of opera and kink, the obsession with gender norms (and their subversion) in both practices, and the highly scripted nature of opera scenes and BDSM scenes.
If you enjoy a wide range of composers (Handel, Mozart, Wagner, and Berg feature prominently in the five chapters which make up the body of the book) and the premise intrigues you, pick this up and get ready for a challenging, but rewarding read.

[Caffeinated Fae]

DNF'd at 6%

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into this book. I have always been fascinated by opera, and as someone who has always shown an interest in BDSM and Deviancy, I thought this book would be able to hold my attention. Though Deviant Opera has an interesting concept, I felt like I was reading a research article. This book didn't grab my attention. This could be an excellent book for anyone who wants to read an academic book or for anyone in college looking for various examples of the BDSM lifestyle in the mainstream media.

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.