Murder, She Arranged

Abstract

Abstract This chapter questions how contemporary arrangements of canonic operas might subvert pervasive notions of Werktreue (faithfulness to the original) that exist for even twenty-first century performers. Drawing on ethnographic research completed in 2016 at the Banff Centre, this chapter examines the rehearsals and performances of No One’s Safe, a workshop production created by Canadian director Joel Ivany, which combines a new English libretto with arias and ensembles chosen from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan Tutte to depict a whodunit following a murder. The chapter argues that this work demonstrates how experimental arrangements might allow performers to decontextualize the performance of Mozart from both the operatic canon and institutionalized hierarchies of performance. Simultaneously, No One’s Safe also reveals the pervasive ways in which the ghost of Mozart—and correspondingly, “his” authority—haunts even performances that seek to move beyond traditional conventions of the operatic stage.