ABSTRACT
Paul Atkinson utilizes a dramaturgical framework to analyze the embodied craft of opera performance. Atkinson clearly illustrates a dramaturgical body which is fashioned of gesture. Based on his ethnographic work with the Welsh National Opera, Atkinson illustrates how, through tedious repetition, opera embodies gesture to stylistically convey meaning in a performance that is both a visual and musical: “Words, music, and bodies are brought into conjunction, and bodies are coached to move and interact in the physical space of the stage.” Atkinson’s analysis informs much more than opera, it is a lens into “the complex relations between embodied gesture, intentions and motives, emotions and reactions, characters and actions.”
