Award Date

5-1-2020

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)

Department

Music

First Committee Member

Alfonse Anderson

Second Committee Member

Jonathan Lee

Third Committee Member

Linda Lister

Fourth Committee Member

David Weiller

Fifth Committee Member

Nate Bynum

Sixth Committee Member

Kathryn Korgan

Number of Pages

78

Abstract

On January 18, 2010, Gil Shohat's operatic adaptation of Hanoch Levin's 1993 play, The Child Dreams, had its world premiere at the Israeli Opera. The opera was commissioned for the opening of that company's twenty-fifth season. Levin's play holds a central place in Israeli culture; given the play's stature, Shohat's musical work raises a number of essential questions about adaptations and their consequent reception. This document will examine the critical perception of the effort: did the critics reviewing the production understand Shohat's intentions and did they "read" the work in the same way that he did?

We possess a wealth of information linked to the critical reception of the premiere of The Child Dreams—much more than can be found around similar occasions. Papers and magazines published a robust collection of reviews, in addition to many written and filmed documentations of the production process. Shohat has participated in interviews and has written about the opera and the considerations he had in adapting the play. My research will focus on the reception of Shohat's The Child Dreams, narrowing on the composer's handling of Levin's text. Reviews will serve as the central source in establishing my thesis. An examination of these reviews following the premiere reveals the (maybe unconscious) bias that Israeli critics, and perhaps even the public, had in their reception of the opera. Levin and Shohat embody starkly different sensibilities, and neither the historical reception of the play nor the critical reaction to the recent operatic treatment can be separated from these men themselves.

Keywords

Critical Reception; Gil Shohat; Hanoch Levin; Operatic Adaptation; The Child Dreams; The Israeli Opera

Disciplines

Music | Theatre and Performance Studies

File Format

pdf

File Size

6.1 MB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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