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[SPEED] Faces of quiet trauma [TIME 1] In 2006 Jonathan Torgovnik, an Israeli-born photographer, travelled to Rwanda with a reporter to investigate how HIV had been used as a weapon of war during the 1994 genocide. This atrocity left more than 800,000 people dead, but one interviewee revealed another aspect of its aftermath: “This woman,” Mr Torgovnik explains, “described how her family were killed and how she was raped and how she’d contracted HIV as a result. And she mentioned, in passing, that she had become pregnant through these rapes and had a boy.” Mr Torgovnik says the interview kept coming back to him in the following weeks, so he “decided to go to Rwanda and start a personal project to investigate this issue.” He spent the next three years interviewing women who’d had a child after being raped by militiamen. He photographed them with their children, many of whom don’t know the truth about their parentage. In 2009 he published a book about his project called "Intended Consequences", and in July his exhibition of the same name won the Discovery prize at one of Europe’s largest photography festivals—Les Rencontres d’Arles in France—where it is on show until September 23rd. “These women are ostracised,” Mr Torgovnik says. “They are rejected by their communities because of the stigma associated with rape, associated with HIV, associated with having a child of the enemy, so to speak.” But despite their trauma, and despite talking to a man and an outsider, Mr Torgovnik found the women he interviewed surprisingly candid. “I think they’d kept it in for so many years that when someone was finally there to collect their testimonies, they actually pleaded with me to tell their stories because they cannot tell them themselves.” Their trauma was not only harrowing to hear about, but hard to photograph. “How do you document trauma in pictures?” Mr Torgovnik asks. “These experiences happened many years ago.” His solution was to photograph his subjects immediately after he had interviewed them, when their emotion was still at the surface. [337 WORDS] [TIME 2] Photographing on film rather than digitally helped too. “I had to change the roll of film every 12 pictures, and as I was changing the film I could see they were more relaxed. It took two or three rolls of film before they were relaxed with each other and relaxed with me.” For the first time Mr Torgovnik’s work has taken him beyond photojournalism. In 2008, he started a charity called Foundation Rwanda, which now supports 860 families. “I’m still very much involved in the country and with this specific population of survivors of the genocide.”
Isabelle with her son, Jean-Paul (pictured above) "A group of militias attacked our home and killed my three brothers. Then they took me to a place where they raped me, one after the other. I can’t tell you how many there were; I can’t describe the experience. What I know is that later I realised that I was pregnant. I’d never had sex before; that was the first time. After giving birth, I thought of killing the baby because I was bitter, but eventually I decided not to kill him. I feel trauma every time I look at this boy because I don’t know who his father is. I am physically handicapped because of the beatings that I endured and I can’t carry anything. I can’t work. All I can do is sit down. It was not until now that I can say it is good that I didn’t kill that boy because he fetches water for me. Now I have accepted that he is my son, and I will do whatever I can in my position as a mother to raise him. But I fail in my duty as a mother because of poverty. Sometimes he doesn’t have enough to eat. I am not interested in a family. I am not interested in love. I don’t see any future for me. Sometimes I look at my situation and compare myself with people who have their families around them, and I regret that I didn’t die in the genocide." [346 WORDS] [TIME 3] Bernadette with her son, Faustin "My mother negotiated with a militia member to try and save us. We gave him part of our eucalyptus plantation to save my brother, Turgen. We didn’t know that they would kill women. Three days later, he came back and said that he no longer wanted the land. He said, “I want your daughter; I want this girl.” My mother said no, that the land was enough. Then he came back again with other militiamen. Eventually they took me to the forest, and he told them to gather around. He told the other militiamen to reduce my height because I had always been arrogant; so they got clubs and hit my legs. I couldn’t move; I was shaking all over. Later, I went to a refugee camp for Tutsis. But little did I know that this man had made me pregnant. My son is 12 years old, and I think he knows. Once he came crying that someone told him, “You’re the son of a militiaman. Your father is in prison.” You can't take the sins of the father and blame them on the child. The philosophy I use for my life is to laugh; so I laughed and after laughing told him, “Why should that worry you? Why should that make you cry?” If he has brains, he should know by the way that I laughed; I confirmed to him that he is the son of a militiaman. Whenever I think about his future, I don’t know, and that is my biggest problem. If there is anything that tortures me, it is the tomorrow of my son."
Josette with her son, Thomas "The militia came in the evening and locked us in a house. Then they said they were going to rape us, but they used the word marry. They said they were going to marry us until we stopped breathing. They would rape us at night, and then the next day they would go out to kill. [336 WORDS] [TIME 4] That was the pattern of our lives. Every morning they hit us ten times. After hitting us, we got a different man. Eventually my sister said it was too much, that we needed to commit suicide. I left, but I didn’t know where to go. My uncle didn’t welcome me into his house. He asked me who was responsible for my pregnancy. I said if I am pregnant, then it must be the militias since many of them had raped me. He said I shouldn’t enter his house carrying a baby of the Hutus and chased me away. I must be honest with you; I never loved this child. Whenever I remember what his father did to me, I used to feel the only revenge would be to kill his son. But I never did that. I forced myself to like him, but he is unlikable. The boy is too stubborn and bad. He behaves like a street child. It’s not because he knows that I don’t love him; it is that blood in him."
Clare with her daughter, Elisabeth "Before the genocide, I had a family. I had parents, I had relatives, I had brothers and sisters; we lived a happy life until the genocide came and destroyed it. Everybody was killed, apart from me. On April 6th, the president was killed, and Tutsis around our village were targeted by Hutu militias that were very organised, like they had prepared this for many years. My family fled to the nearby church. A priest told me I should hide in the head priest’s house. When I entered, he called his friend and said this was an opportunity for them to “enjoy a Tutsi girl.” And so both of them raped me in the house of the chief priest. Later one mocked me, “I wanted to love you, but you were too proud. Now I have enjoyed you when I didn’t even want you.” He called in other militias; outside the parish, my upper teeth were removed with clubs. [339 WORDS] [TIME 5] They had dug holes in the forest. There, they hit me with clubs and machetes and threw me among the dead bodies. They thought I was dead. I don’t know how I survived, but in the night, I managed to walk slowly through the dead bodies and then quietly through the bushes. But I was discovered along the way by many militiamen, and they all raped me. Each time I was “saved” by someone, he would rape me and then lead me to another bush where I would be raped again. When I found out I was pregnant, I thought that I would kill the child as soon as it was born. But when she arrived, she looked like my family, and I realised she was part of me. I started to love her. Now, I love my daughter so much; actually, our relationship is more like sisters."
Olivia with her son, Marco "About ten thousand people had fled to the church compound. After a week, militias started attacking us. It was a terrible experience. They entered with machetes, with axes, with grenades and guns. They started cutting into the crowd. It was all noise, crying, and the killing did not stop. On the third day, they did not kill, but spent the entire day just raping women from different corners of the church. I am a victim of that day; they raped me with all of my children watching. I can only remember the first five men. After that I started losing my understanding. Even after I was unconscious, they kept raping me. I had a premonition that I might survive if I picked one child and ran away. I looked at all three of my children, and they all looked so nice to me that I couldn’t pick one. But I also knew that I couldn’t run with all three. [313WORDS] [FREE] Eventually, my heart told me to pick the first born, so I ran toward the church door with him. Many other people were running too, and I fell. I put my body over my son’s to protect him. The militias started cutting the people on top into pieces, and blood was falling on us. When they came to my layer, the militiamen said, “I think this one is already dead.” I pretended to be so. I learned later that my other two children were killed after I left them behind in the church." [93 WORDS] [OBSTACLE] Opera
Origins The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. The Mantua court of the Gonzagas, employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of the first actual "opera singers"; Madama Europa.
Italian opera 1. The Baroque era Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In 1637, the idea of a "season" (Carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by Venice's Arcadian Academy which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa. Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera." One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still less cultured than the nobility, to the public opera houses. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte, a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of "intermezzi", which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and '20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions. Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the castrato voice; castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino, as well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni, became in great demand throughout Europe as opera seria ruled the stage in every country except France. Indeed, Farinelli was the most famous singer of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences. Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in the operas of Mozart, who wrote in Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Porpora.
2. Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1754) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout. Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni (in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte) which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. But Mozart's contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.
German-language opera The first German opera was Dafne, composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms developed too. In 1644 Sigmund Staden produced the first Singspiel, a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg presented German operas by Keiser, Telemann and Handel. Yet many of the major German composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun, Hasse and later Gluck, chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian. Mozart's Singspiele, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the French Revolution. Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian bel canto. His Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include Marschner, Schubert, Schumann and Lortzing, but the most significant figure was undoubtedly Wagner. Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, he abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotivs, recurring themes often associated with the characters and concepts of the drama; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted. Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions. He first won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra, in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der Rosenkavalier, where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right up until Capriccio in 1942. Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include Zemlinsky, Korngold, Schreker, Hindemith, Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the section on modernism. [1460WORDS] |
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