The Digital Upgrade of Opera Theater. Intermedial Dramaturgies and Technological Visualities in Fanny and Alexander’s Spectacles

Always bound to forms of «intermedial dramaturgy» (Del Gaudio 2020), the company Fanny & Alexander (Luigi De Angelis and Chiara Lagani) since 2015 has started a new directorial path in the field of Opera. The technological visuality of the group’s Opera directions are an expression of a «media combination» (Rajewsky 2018) founded on the intersection between performative dynamics and video projections, able to produce imaginative gashes and redefine the representational customs of melodramas by steering the audience’s reception towards unpredictable routes. Applying a methodological approach that catches the intermedial dimension of stagings according to the epistemological premises of Digital Performance (Giannachi 2004, Dixon 2007, Kattenbelt 2008, Salter 2010) and the lines research of Opera Studies (Hutcheon 2006, Levin 2007, Till 2012, Guccini 2016), the intervention aims to illustrate the scenic and visual innovations of four specific case studies: Il flauto magico (2015), Orfeo nel metrò (2019), L’isola disabitata (2021), Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria (2022). Aimed at sublimating performance and electronic media by activating an impressive degree of intermediality, Fanny & Alexander’s spectacles realize a digital upgrade of Opera theatre, bringing about a structural change in the dramaturgies of melodramas and an intense enhancement of the sensitive experience of singers and spectators.