Gastvortrag: Prof. Dr. Assaf Shelleg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

17. Juni 2025, von Webmaster

Foto: Monika Rittershaus / Salzburger Festspiele

Desemanticizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Contemporary Opera 

The talk examines Zaide/Adama (1779/2004-5) by Mozart and Chaya Czernowin. Written 225 years apart, Mozart’s unfinished Singspiel and Czernowin opera were commissioned to be intertwined at the 2006 Salzburger Festspiele with distinct casts and accompanying ensembles. Focusing on Czernowin’s attempt (and failure) to undo language and semantics, this talk studies the scenic adjacencies and intentional overlays of both works, especially as these mediations deem Zaide an indirect commentary on Adama while Adama at the saem time realizes new emotional affordances in Zaide (affordances that were aesthetically illegitimate from the perspective of late eighteenth-century opera). Building on this operatic braiding and particularly Czernowin’s attempt to stage a phonemic level of communication between an unnamed Israeli Woman and a nameless Palestinian man, the talk will discuss the unbridgeable gap between contemporary histories of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and desirable artistic failures, such as those animating Adama. 

Abendvortrag von Prof. Dr. Assaf Shelleg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Institut für Historische Musikwissenschaft
Neue Rabenstraße 13
20354 Hamburg 

Donnerstag, 10. Juli 2025, 18 Uhr 

1. OG, Raum 1002 

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