Theatricality and Absorption
Chapter 2 engages with the contention that a multiplicity of media offers audio-viewers a multiplicity of positions toward what is presented on stage or screen. What tends to be overlooked is the way audio-viewers’ attention is managed in hypermedia. This chapter concentrates on how points of experience are constructed in hypermedial opera, referencing the narratological concept of focalization. It is particularly attentive to situations in which the perspective that shapes the relationship between the stage and the auditorium is obscured, giving rise to an effect of absorption. The situations in which this relationship is openly acknowledged are approached through the concept of theatricality. Continuing the analysis of Louis Andriessen’s and Peter Greenaway’s opera Rosa, this chapter demonstrates how the effect of absorption is achieved by means of music within the multiplicity of visual representations typical of hypermediacy, focusing on the issue of temporality.