Philosophy Compass 6/9 (2011): 575–584, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00423.

Aesthetics of Opera
Paul Thom*
The University of Sydney

Abstract
An inclusive sense of ‘opera’ is distinguished from the Western high-art sense. The problem of
aesthetic unity in opera is discussed in relation to (i) hybrid art forms (Kivy’s idea of antithetical
arts, Levinson’s account of hybridity, and Ridley’s critique of it); (ii) specific operatic styles (Hegel
on Handel and Rossini, Kerman, Kivy and Davies on Mozart, Goehr and Magee on Wagner);
(iii) individual operatic productions and performances (Tanner on Kupfer, Williams on Sellars).
The article includes links to video clips from operatic performances.

1. Introduction
Many discussions of the philosophy of music expressly avoid the topic of opera. In a cele-
brated phrase, Peter Kivy once declared that with regard to vocal music ‘all bets are off’
(Kivy 1997: 154). The avoidance of this topic has perhaps sometimes been the result of a
pair of widespread prejudices. The first of these is what Aaron Ridley calls a philosophical
prejudice against song (Ridley: 76–83). The other is a longstanding prejudice against the
theatre (Thom 1993: 8–12). There is also a line of philosophical reasoning according to
which opera is not ‘pure’ music. Hegel, for instance, argued that ‘the principle of music
is the inner life of the individual’, and that this inner life – ‘subjectivity as such’ – cannot
have any fixed content and is best expressed in music that lacks a text, i.e. instrumental
music (Hegel: 952–3). If pure music is non-vocal, then the whole art form of opera, as
an amalgam of music with words or dramatic action, is not pure music.
When philosophers have written about opera, it has been either in relation to the art
form, or to individual operas, or to the preparation and execution of individual produc-
tions.

2. The Art Form

In an exclusive sense the term ‘opera’ is restricted to works belonging to an elite Western
artistic tradition, executed in ostentatious custom-built venues. In a more inclusive sense
the term also covers musicals, rock opera, Chinese opera, performances in intimate ven-
ues or in the open air (as in the Baths of Caracalla), and so on. Opinion is divided on
the question whether all opera in the inclusive sense deserves the name of art. Some, like
Theodor Adorno, see that some of these forms can be mass-produced, and therefore want
to withhold the title of art from them (Adorno: 428 on Viennese operettas). Others, like
Francis Sparshott, argue that musicals like Top Hat contain highly creative and imagina-
tive material, saying of Fred Astaire that he ‘thinks and works like an artist’ (Sparshott
1988: 282). Hegel thought that operetta, vaudeville, and spoken drama that contains
songs, lack the sort of unity possessed by ‘real opera’. Nonetheless, he admired the way
that, when characters in an operetta burst into song, ‘‘feelings and passions are stirred in a

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living way and in general prove amenable to musical description’’ (Hegel: 951). Of
course, even opera in the exclusive sense can be unartistic. At the same time, much opera
aspires to the status of art, and this aspiration is not confined to opera in the exclusive
sense.
One aspect of opera has been of special philosophical interest because it arises from a
way in which features intrinsic to the art form appear to be in tension with its aspiration
for artistic status. The writing of an opera involves joining together multiple creative dis-
ciplines, and its performance involves a collaboration between skilled performers and
technicians in different fields of presentation. This is an essential feature of the form. But
it creates difficulties in achieving the type of unity that many philosophers believe should
be possessed by a work of art. Peter Kivy states this difficulty in an extreme way, declar-
ing that there is an inherent incompatibility between the main elements of which an
opera is composed (Kivy 2002: 164). This feature of opera creates a need to combine dis-
tinct creative disciplines in artistically satisfying ways. This has been called ‘the problem
of opera’ (Dahlhaus: 64).
Art forms are distinguished from one another by their methods of production, their
media, and their characteristic capacities. Opera, as a two-stage art, is actually two inter-
connected art forms: one that creates materials for performance, the other that interprets
and stages those materials. I use the expression ‘materials for performance’ in order to
capture opera’s performance-directed intentionality without requiring that those materials
should have the status of works of art. Some philosophers advocate a radical approach to
materials for theatrical performance, viewing them not as works but somewhat like ingre-
dients to be mixed and added to in ways determined by the director (Hamilton: 31); and
this view has application to contemporary styles of opera production. Other writers argue
that the concept of a work of art (on the analogy of works in the literary and visual arts)
was not applied to music until around 1800, and that therefore we should not subsume
music written before that time under the concept of a work of art (Goehr 2007: 114–5).
To this argument one might respond by distinguishing ‘thick’ from ‘thin’ musical works
(Davies 2003: 41) on the basis of how comprehensive a work’s prescriptions are. One
could then admit that while many operas are comparatively indeterminate and
comparatively fluid in what they require for their performance, they still make some per-
formance-requirements; and on that basis we can distinguish comparatively thin works
that are common to all the versions of a given opera and thicker works that are specific
to a particular version of the opera. A similar move can also be used in response to the
observation that performances of Cantonese Opera may include extensive improvisation
(Yung: ch.5): Such improvisation takes place within a pre-agreed frame; and that frame
may be regarded as a minimal work.
Opera’s methods of production in both of its stages are collaborative: the materials for
performance are created by librettists and composers working together, and they are inter-
preted and executed by teams of performers, directors, choreographers, designers and
technicians. The materials for performance are created in the medium of instructions for
singing, movement, orchestral playing, and the creation of scenic effects (standardly in the
form of operatic scores); the performance occurs in the medium of actions and events in a
performance-space (Thom 1993: 174–8). The artistic capacities of this art-form (and these
are fully realized only in performance) include the exploitation of the human voice’s
force, agility, and expressiveness in performances of power and scale with themes of cor-
responding impact and grandeur – themes such as love, death, liberty and the nation.
The ‘problem of opera’ arises because opera is a hybrid, the result of combining a plu-
rality of other art-forms. Philosophical discussion of the problem therefore requires clarity

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about what is meant by a hybrid art-form. Jerrold Levinson thinks an art-form’s hybridity
should be defined in terms of the form’s historical emergence from a plurality of pre-
existing forms (Levinson 1990: 5–7). He distinguishes three types of hybridity. In a juxta-
positional hybrid, ‘the objects or products of two (or more) arts are simply joined together
and presented as one larger, more complex unit’. In a fused or synthetic hybrid,
two (or more) arts are brought together in such a way that the individual components to some
extent lose their original identities and are present in the hybrid in a form significantly different
from that assumed in the pure state.
He also mentions a third species of hybridity, closely related to the second: transformation
is ‘closer to the synthetic model than to the juxtapositional one’ but ‘‘differs from the for-
mer in that the arts combined do not contribute to the result in roughly the same
degree’’ (Levinson 1990: 8–10).
Levinson regards Wagnerian music-drama as involving fusion, and Robert Wilson and
Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach as largely juxtapositional, while allowing that even in
juxtapositional hybrids ‘the whole is often (aesthetically) ‘‘more than’’ the sum of its parts’
(Levinson 1990: 9). In other words there may be a kind of integration even in non-syn-
thetic hybrids. In the performing arts, integration can occur in three ways. Integration of
action occurs when a complex action has been learned by the performer in such a way
that it is executed as a single action, not by combining separate actions. The possibility of
integrated action is important in the performance of opera, because a single performer has
to combine acting with singing. Integration of presentation occurs when the agents who
present a performance contrive to exhibit the actions of distinct agents (or an action and
an associated event on stage) in an integrated presentation. This is important in opera
because many different performers and technicians have to coordinate their actions with
one another. Integration of perception occurs when discrete events are perceived in a sin-
gle perception. All three types of integration would standardly occur in a performance of
Einstein on the Beach.
Levinson thinks that artistic products in which one element accompanies another are
supposed invariably to be juxtapositional (Levinson 1990: 8–9). And yet, a doubt can eas-
ily arise about these classifications. The score of any opera notates the singing on one
stave, the orchestral music on other staves, and the stage directions under the staves –
suggesting that the orchestra and the stage effects are to be understood as accompanying
the singing. Indeed, the stage effects are standardly brought about by people other than
the singers, just as the accompaniment to a song is standardly played by someone other
than the singer.
Levinson’s analysis of hybridity as a historical concept has been challenged by Aaron
Ridley (Ridley: 80–3). Another line of criticism questions the foundation of his division
of hybrids. The characterization of transformation appears to make this type of hybrid a
species of fusion rather than a distinct species. So there are really only two major species
of hybrid (juxtaposition and fusion), one of which has an identified sub-species. The
opposed species of fusion would then be fusion in which the combined arts contribute
equally to the final product.
The distinction between juxtaposition and fusion is in the first place a distinction
between two methods of production. But Levinson draws his distinction in more than
one way. In addition to the conceptual opposition between these two methods of pro-
duction, he appeals to the opposition between hybrids in which ‘some essential or defin-
ing feature of one or both arts is challenged or withdrawn’ and where ‘the individual
components … retain their identities as instances of their respective art forms’. But this

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opposition does not seem to concern the methods whereby the hybrids are produced.
There is a familiar sense in which some of the characteristic features of theatre, as an art
form, are withdrawn or lost when theatre becomes music-theatre: Joy Calico mentions
the capacity of spoken drama to observe the Aristotelian unities of place, time and
action – a capacity which cannot be realized in an opera (Calico: 40) because singing
standardly takes so much longer than speech. And in this sense it seems that an art
form’s defining features and artistic identity are a matter of its artistic capacities. So Lev-
inson appears to elide a distinction between two methods of production with a distinc-
tion between different sets of characteristic capacities.
It is natural to assume that hybrids produced by juxtaposition will be such as to retain
the identities of the contributory art forms: in the mere juxtaposition of two art forms,
nothing has been done to affect the capacities of those art forms. (At the same time, jux-
taposition may result in the generation of new artistic capacities that were not present in
the original art forms.) It may also seem natural to assume that hybrids produced by
fusion involve the withdrawal of some capacities from the contributing art forms. What
does seem right is the thought that fusion must produce new artistic capacities. If in addi-
tion we assume that the generation of new artistic capacities in a fusion can only be
achieved by withdrawing some of the pre-existing capacities of the contributing art
forms, then we will conclude that a fusion must lack some of the artistic capacities of the
contributing art forms. But this extra assumption can be challenged. It seems that there is
nothing self-contradictory in the idea of two elements retaining all their original capacities
in a fusion that has new capacities which the elements lacked in their unfused state.
Interestingly, this idea (self-contradictory or not) was what Wagner had in mind when
in The Art-work of the Future he proposed the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a collective
work of art which seeks to revivify the ancient Greek theatre by combining the arts of
drama and dance, poetry and music in an artistic unity (Magee: 90). In Wagner’s own
words, ‘‘The highest collective art work is the drama; it is present in its ultimate
completeness only when each art variety, in its ultimate completeness, is present in it’’
(Wagner: 900). What is evident in this description is that each of the contributory art
forms is present ‘in its ultimate completeness’. The ideal art-work is a fully fledged drama
featuring music along with the other arts – each one in its fullest and finest form, not in
a pared-down or debased form. There have been those who thought this ideal was inter-
nally incoherent. Berthold Brecht was among them; in his notes to the opera Aufstieg und
Fall der Stadt Mahagonny he writes:
So long as the expression ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (or ‘integrated work of art’) means that the inte-
gration is a muddle, so long as the arts are supposed to be ‘fused’ together, the various elements
will all be equally degraded, each will act as a mere ‘feed’ to the rest (Sutcliffe: 234).
But if we think Brecht’s view is not self-evidently correct we should leave open the pos-
sibility of a fused hybrid in which the artistic capacities of the contributory art forms are
fully present. And even if Brecht is right, the Gesamtkunstwerk may perform a useful func-
tion as an ideal for the makers of opera to try to approximate.
In some of his writings, Kivy claims that there is a very specific antithesis between
the literary and musical arts: music is an art of repetition, whereas literature aims for a
continuous flow without repetition (Kivy 2009: 112). Can we elucidate this claim by
reference to the notion of an art form’s artistic capacities? The realization of such capac-
ities will be possible under certain conditions, and not under others. Two art forms may
be said in a weak sense to be ‘antithetical’ when some artistic capacity of one cannot be
realized simultaneously with some artistic capacity of the other. For two art forms to be

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antithetical in a strong sense, it would be required that no artistic capacities of one form
can be realized simultaneously with any artistic capacity of the other. It is not plausible
to claim that music and drama are strongly antithetical on the ground that all of the
artistic capacities of music depend on repetition and none of the artistic capacities of
drama allow repetition. There are musical forms that place no great stock by repetition,
and literary forms such as poetry whose artistic potential requires a good deal of repeti-
tion. Types of repetition (flashbacks, and other devices that present time in a non-linear
fashion) are also found in the artistic repertoire of the novel. So, if Kivy is attributing a
strong antithesis to music and drama, then his position is not plausible. Is his position
then based on finding a weak antithesis between music and drama? When a pair of art
forms which are weakly antithetical are combined in a hybrid, the hybrid must be syn-
thetic rather than juxtapositional (given that in a juxtapositional hybrid all the artistic
capacities of the contributory art forms remain intact). So, let us suppose that music and
drama are weakly antithetical because some of music’s artistic capacities depend on the
use of repetition and some of drama’s artistic capacities depend on the absence of repeti-
tion. Then it will follow that if music and drama are combined in a hybrid form, the
hybrid will be a synthetic one. But this conclusion is in no way problematic. It requires
only that in a hybrid of music and drama, music’s love of repetition must be partly
withdrawn, or drama’s fear of repetition partly overcome. If music and drama, or any
other pair of art forms, are weakly antithetical, then they cannot be combined in a jux-
tapositional hybrid, but they could be combined in a synthetic hybrid, in a number of
aesthetically different ways. If they are not weakly antithetical, then they may also be
able to combined in a juxtapositional hybrid.

3. Operatic Works
In keeping with his general view of opera as drama, Joseph Kerman regards Mozart’s Cosı̀
fan tutte as a drama ‘‘whose integral existence is determined from point to point and in
the whole by musical articulation’’ (Kerman: 13). On this view, music’s determining
function is pervasive throughout an operatic work, and this fact suggests that Kerman sees
opera as a synthetic hybrid that must be evaluated as drama, even though its dramatic
integrity is determined by its music. Using this interpretive framework, Kerman sees Cosı̀
as a flawed synthesis because the psychology implicit in the drama is not matched by that
which is expressed by the music: the latter shows a profundity that ill fits the superficiality
of the former. The music, he says, ‘spoils’ the drama (Kerman: 115).
Peter Kivy proposes an interpretive framework different from Kerman’s. An opera, he
suggests, can be seen as drama-made-music. As such it must be evaluated as music. It will
still be a synthesis of music and drama, but an unequal one in which drama plays a sub-
servient role. From this perspective, Cosı̀ appears not as a flawed drama but as ‘Mozart’s
most perfect creation for the stage’. It operates, Kivy says, not with fully formed charac-
ters but with four principal voices that are treated like the solo instruments in a sinfonia
concertante whose composition is governed by a principle of the permutations and com-
binations of those soloists (Kivy 1988: 256–61).
Some of Kivy’s language suggests that he has an Aristotelian model in mind, whereby
in the genesis of an opera, what happens is not that music is combined with a pre-exist-
ing drama (as would happen in the genesis of a Purcellian semi-opera, or a play with
songs) but rather that a drama becomes music. He speaks of opera as ‘a genre not of
drama but of music’, drama being its ‘material substance’ – a material that even if it is
‘recalcitrant’ gets ‘transformed’ into music (Kivy 1988: 276). These are terms drawn from

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Aristotle’s account of change as the transformation of pre-existing (and sometimes recal-

citrant) material. However, it’s hard to see what it could mean for anything that is not
already music to become music. Of course, non-musical sounds can be succeeded by
musical sounds; but Kivy’s language suggests that something which is not music, while
remaining what it is, is later music (in the way that a piece of bronze can become a sta-
tue while remaining a piece of bronze).
Levinson offers an account that is similar to Kivy’s but is not open to this objection.
Instead of conceiving the creation of an opera as drama becoming music, Levinson con-
ceives of the creators as
attending to musical matters foremost, though with dramatic purpose in mind, rather than first
closely modelling the human expression of thought and feeling involved, and only subsequently
attempting to weave the resultant tone pictures into a musical fabric (Levinson 1996: 56).
According to this conception, we should assess an operatic passage
in light of its dramatic function, as opposed to the purely autonomous, and in such case inappropri-
ate, assessment of the music with no awareness or else total disregard of its dramatic function (Lev-
inson 1996: 55).
Stephen Davies has also written about Cosı̀. He describes the opera composer’s task as
seen by Mozart: ‘‘to meld music and drama in a marriage that produces an integrated
form responsive to the themes underlying the formulaic narratives upon which the plots
of such works draw’’ (Davies 2008: 249). Davies sees Cosı̀ neither as flawed by a mis-
match between drama and music, nor as a perfect purely musical work, but as a successful
musical drama, comparable to Mozart’s other collaborations with Da Ponte, in ‘‘achieving
a musico-dramatic form through the development of character and action, thereby going
beyond the surface of stock characters and formulaic plots’’ (Davies 2008: 252). In direct-
ing attention to an opera’s underlying theme, and the way in which a composer may or
may not expose that in the music, Davies reminds us that the elements to be combined
in an opera are not confined to words and music, but also include other elements possess-
ing artistic potential.
Another Mozart opera that has attracted philosophical commentary is Don Giovanni.
Joseph Kerman finds the plot of this work improbable and its main character vacuous
(Kerman: 98–104), and because of this finds in it a less than ideal unity between the
opera’s musical and dramatic elements. By contrast, the Danish philosopher Søren Kier-
kegaard found in the work a perfect fit between the subject-matter and the operatic
form: ‘‘One could not imagine a more perfect subject for an opera than Don Juan’’
(Kierkegaard: 97). On Gary Tomlinson’s interpretation, the reason why this is so is that
Don Giovanni is not about a character at all, but about the energy and passion which the
Don embodies, and which Kierkegaard sees as the proper subject matter of music itself
(Tomlinson: 65). Certainly, opera’s artistic capacities include ways of expressing energy
and passion that are unique to this art form. Does this mean that ideally operas should
be about subjects that possess energy and passion? Only on the naı̈vely mimetic view
that the qualities expressed in an art work must be possessed by the work’s subject mat-
ter. An art work’s expressive powers are a function of the work’s qualities, not those of
its subject. Kierkegaard also thought that there was something intrinsically musical about
the figure of Don Juan, something that uniquely stamped it as an operatic subject:
‘‘There will never be more than one work of which it is possible to say that its idea is
absolutely musical.’’ (Kierkegaard: 46) Lydia Goehr observes that, though Kierkegaard
wrote before Tristan and Isolde, his claim about Mozart’s opera can also be made about

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Wagner’s (Goehr 2006: 140). Goehr’s point rests on adopting Wagner’s own view of
Tristan and Isolde. Under the influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Wagner ‘is now
expressing, or thinks he is, the noumenal reality of which the stage characters are them-
selves phenomena’; and this noumenal reality is something that can be conveyed only by
music (Magee: 210–12).
The operas of Handel and Rossini receive some perceptive commentary in Hegel’s
Lectures on the Fine Arts. Regarding the unity, or fit, between an aria’s melody and the
‘characterization’ required by individual sung words or lines, Hegel criticized Handel in
his operas for demanding ‘a strictness of expression for every single lyrical feature’ at the
expense of the melody which ought to be the unifying expressive element; and he con-
trasted Handel’s operas with those of Rossini, which he found to be
full of feeling and genius, piercing the mind and heart, even if it does not have to do with the
sort of characterization beloved of our strict German musical intellect (Hegel: 948–9).
Hegel, of course, was not familiar with the Brecht ⁄ Weil collaborations Die Dreigroschenop-
er and Mahagonny in which the sentimentality of a melody is deliberately undercut by its
text, thus creating an effect of estrangement, the Verfremdungseffekt. In a way, this operatic
style flouts the Hegelian principle of unity between melody and characterization. How-
ever, if we follow Joy Calico’s analysis of the Verfremdungseffekt we will be able to see it
as creating a complex type of unity in the spectator’s experience. On her analysis, this
effect is a two-stage process in which an initial response of alienation (Entfremdung), upon
reflection, turns into understanding (Calico: 140). Even so, the unity that is supposed to
be achieved through this Brechtian process is not one in which the melody dominates.
The aesthetic properties of operatic works can only partly be accounted for in terms
derived from the notion of hybridity.

4. Operatic Productions
Hegel, with one eye on Aristotle’s rule that in tragedy the spectacle has the least to do
with the poet’s art (Aristotle: ch.6), comments that, while spectacle has no place in
poetry, the case is different in opera. In operas that are characterized by ‘the audible mag-
nificence of arias and the resounding and rippling chorus of voices and instruments’ the
staging should also exhibit a ‘visible magnificence’. And a similar style of staging should
be undertaken in operas that deal with the ‘miraculous, fantastic, and fabulous’. He cites
Mozart’s Magic Flute as an example. In this case, given the lack of anything intelligible in
the plot, we must take in the scenery and costumes ‘‘in the mood we have in reading
one of the Arabian Nights’’ (Hegel: 1191). The general principle, in both sorts of case, is
the achievement of artistic unity.
Hegel does not raise the question whether the pursuit of artistic unity in performing an
opera should or should not take precedence over following the original stage-directions;
but it is not hard to imagine circumstances in which artistic unity can be achieved only
by departing from the original stage directions. In such circumstances, presumably Hegel
would feel free to abandon original stage-directions in the name of artistic unity. There is
a widely accepted view that stage-directions carry lesser authority than is carried by the
musical score (Thom 1993: 40, 86). On that view, there cannot be any conflict between
following the stage directions and seeking artistic unity; the latter must always prevail.
Nonetheless, opera performances are sometimes guided by ‘authentic performance
practice’ (Thom 2011: 98–9). These are of two types. First, an attempt may be made to
re-create, as far as possible, what is known about the style of a performance from the

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time of the work’s creation: an example is Gilbert Deflo’s 2002 production of Monte-
verdi’s Orfeo (musical direction by Jordi Savall, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona). Here,
an artistic fusion is created between the sounds of period instruments and vocal styles,
and visual imagery and movement from the period of the work’s composition. Second,
the goal may be to integrate elements of old and new performance practices, as in Trisha
Brown’s 1998 production of Orfeo (musical direction by René Jacobs, La Monnaie
National Opera Brussels 1998). Here the medium of modern dance was integrated with
styles of singing and instrumental performance that were guided by knowledge of period
performance practice. Bernard Williams comments on the ‘triumphant success’ of Peter
Sellars’ production of Handel’s Theodora – a production that combines ‘authenticity’ of
vocal and instrumental sound with contemporary settings which vividly bring to mind
political issues of our time. At the same time, Williams notes that it would be ‘virtually
nonsensical’ to suppose that this effect could have been achieved by using 18th-century
settings and acting styles (Williams: 76).
Besides these attempts at ‘authenticity’, Philip Gossett distinguishes two main
approaches (Gossett: 466–84). First, the production may ‘displace’ the work to a time or
place different from what the text calls for: an example is Peter Sellars’ 1989 production
of Mozart’s Cosı̀ fan tutte set in a New York diner (musical director Craig Smith;
recorded by ORF). The production demonstrates the opera’s contemporary relevance
(Levin: xv). Second, a radical approach may be adopted towards the text’s directives,
which are viewed somewhat like ingredients to be mixed and added to in ways deter-
mined by the director (Hamilton: 31). An example is Peter Konwitschny’s 2004 produc-
tion of Verdi’s Don Carlos (musical director Bertrand de Billy, Wiener Staatsoper). In
several of Konwitschny’s productions he has his singers stepping out of the work, ‘‘inter-
rupting it at a moment of crisis, turning their – and the audience’s – attention to the
ideological scene of production’’ (Levin: xviii). These interruptions juxtapose material
that does not belong to the work with the contents of the work. Some philosophers
regard these radical productions as sabotaging the works they claim to be presenting.
Michael Tanner describes the Harry Kupfer ⁄ Daniel Barenboim Bayreuth Götterdämmerung,
in the final scene of which Brünnhilde detonates a nuclear holocaust ‘‘while the bour-
geoisie dragged on their TV sets and watched the end of civilization as they sipped their
glasses of Sekt’’ (Tanner: 61).
Concerning the creative role of performers in opera, Hegel writes about the genius of
Italian singers who improvise ‘a free melodic stream of the soul which rejoices to resound
on its own account and lift itself on its own wings’, where ‘we have present before us
not merely a work of art but the actual production of one’. To be in the presence of
such a performance is, he says, to forget everything else, including the dramatic situation
and the text (Hegel: 956). For once, Hegel lays aside his demand for artistic unity.
The topic of opera presents many opportunities for philosophical investigation, for
example by integrating opera into broader discussions of the philosophy of music, and by
locating opera’s place among the arts – a place defined not only by its inherent limitations
but also by its unique artistic potential. There is a need to explore the aesthetics of those
forms of opera that have been assigned a secondary status, such as the musical. There is a
need for a history of opera production and performance that brings aesthetic analysis to
bear on the changing architecture of opera houses, of vocal techniques, and of theatre
technologies. Special topics worthy of aesthetic consideration include the operatic sub-
lime, the ways in which opera can manipulate time, the operatic ensemble as the simulta-
neous presentation of distinct voices, and the perlocutionary powers assigned to the voice
in operatic narratives.

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Short Biography
Paul Thom is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at The University of Sydney. He is a
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was Head of the Philosophy
Department in the Faculty of Arts at ANU 1989–1997, Dean of Arts at ANU 1998–
2000, and Executive Dean of Arts at Southern Cross University 2001–2007. His major
publications in the field of aesthetics are For An Audience: A Philosophy of the Performing
Arts (1993), Making Sense: A Theory of Interpretation (2000) and The Musician as Interpreter
(2007). He has authored four books on the history of logic – The Syllogism (1981), The
Logic of Essentialism: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic (1996), Medieval Modal
Systems: Problems and Concepts (2003) and Logic and Ontology in the Syllogistic of Robert
Kilwardby (2007).

Note
* Correspondence: Professor Paul Thom, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Main Quadrangle, The
University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. Email: paul.thom@sydney.edu.au.

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ON-LINE

[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtZA-LX9frY&feature=you-

tube_gdata (Cantonese opera performance).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fizrfcAI13A (Top Hat).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZMvA0w6phU (Einstein on the
Beach).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch3o0qV6TiA (Flagstad and Mel-
chior, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Act II duet).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd8qekSfjAY (Kalman operetta).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU681o8BlZs (Deflo, Monte-
verdi’s L’Orfeo, ‘Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi’).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb2TURdBeEQ (Brown, Monte-
verdi’s L’Orfeo, ‘Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi’).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=art0FnYN-yo (Sellars, Mozart’s
Cosı̀ fan tutte, ‘Smanie Implacabili’).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TbON3JIuaA (Konwitschny,
Verdi’s Don Carlos).
[Online]. Retrieved on 26 May 2011 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQlt1UxjvWU (Sellars, Handel’s
Theodora, ‘Whither should we fly’).

ª 2011 The Author Philosophy Compass 6/9 (2011): 575–584, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00423.x

Philosophy Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd