I hold this truth to be self-evident: that an art form consisting of a literary text, a dramatic stage performance, and music should be studied in all its multimedia and “multimediated” dimensions (Kramer, Opera 25). Today I can make this statement with confidence because the academic study of opera indeed covers all those aesthetic bases, but that has not always been the case. So long as opera fell primarily within the domain of musicology, it was studied first and foremost as music alone. The fact that the music was written for a specific dramatic text was not deemed particularly significant. The very name given to that text betrayed a belief in its secondariness: the diminutive libretto. But things have been changing: in recent years, some musicologists have challenged the dominant positivistic historicism and formalism of their discipline; some have even looked to literary theory for inspiration, bringing new approaches to the music of opera through narratology (e.g., Abbate) or semiotics (e.g., Nattiez). But just as important for opening up the study of opera as an aesthetic and cultural form has been the attention of scholars working in other disciplines. To take but one example, Peter Rabinowitz's rhetorical narrative theory introduced new ways of thinking about opera as narrative, not only as drama and, more pointedly, not only as drama with the composer in the role of dramatist (Kerman). It was opera, not dance, for example, that became a focus for interdisciplinary studies; already multimediated, it attracted diverse lines of inquiry. To cite the title of David Levin's groundbreaking 1994 volume, we can now see “opera through other eyes.” (Musical theater too has been seen through other—especially literary—eyes, but that is not the focus of this piece [see, e.g., Most; Miller; Rabinowitz].)
The Role of Malcolm X's Speeches in Solidifying his Autobiography
