ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, in order to grasp more fully the political significance of the artistic production of new music theatre, the focus must be shifted from the composer’s studio to the performance space. It explores conceptual intersections spanning experimental and new music theatre, as mediated through the embodied practices of specific theorists and performers. The chapter focuses on musical monodramas and music theatre works tailored for a single performer, observing, and the specific experiences of two exceptional vocal performers – Roy Hart and Cathy Berberian – who engaged in training activities that would respond to the increasingly unconventional demands of new music theatre writing. In most cases, twentieth-century musical monodramas were originally tailored to specific vocalists, whose performative power and instrumental qualities. The chapter describes as their ‘bodily tessitura’, projected a unique dramatic timbre onto the performance, and derived from their idiomatic vocal and bodily utterances.
