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Signature:……………………………………… Singing Beasts: Opera and the Animal by Justin Newcomb Grize A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY University of Sussex Submitted October 2016 Viva Voce Examination January 2017 Corrections Submitted July 2017 Acknowledgements: My thanks first and foremost to my supervisors, Professor Nicholas Till and Doctor Evelyn Ficarra, whose contributions to this project have been immeasurable, and to Professors Paul Barker and Sally-Jane Norman, for constructive and enlightening feedback on both the practical and written elements of this project. Any flaws remaining after their oversight are entirely my own doing. To those in the Animal Studies community who have supported my research; in particular Professor Erica Fudge, Professor Tom Tyler, Professor Wendy Woodward, Dr Sarah Smith, and other participants at BIAS (Glasgow 2016) and ICAS (Cape Town, 2014). To the many from other disciplines who have generously offered their time and expertise, particularly Shem Mackey for help on the design of the Tettix; Professor Alex Ford and Rory Edwards at the University of Portsmouth Marine Biology labs for help on ‘Sacculina’; and to Professor Dr Hannelore Hoch (Museum of Natural History, Berlin) and Professor Michael Claridge (Past President of the Royal Entomological Society) for irreplaceable insights into the work of Frej Ossiannilsson. To those who have contributed to the production of the performances and workshops this project comprises: Cécile Chevalier, Ayşe Karabulut, Carina Westling, Hannah Baxter, Kat Carson, Steven, Jen, Ida, John, Katie, and Pippa, as well as others in the research community at the University of Sussex, especially the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (CROMT) and the Creative and Critical Practice Group (CCPRG). The creation of ‘Singing Beasts’ coincided with an operatically tumultuous period of my life, and could not have been completed without the patience, encouragement, and support of those around me who did not lose faith in me, even when I had: Nick, Dex, Tommy, Vanessa, David, Kari, Mom, Rose, Liz, the Bialikiewiczes, Dorota, Janek, Bartek, Suzie, Paula, and Melissa. Thanks, too, to Dr Chris West (1971-2014) for suggesting that the sense of wonder might be worth taking seriously – a dear friend sorely missed. Funded in part by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (maintenance and travel grants) and CROMT (grants for production of The Cricket Seeks a Mate and Sacculina). Contents Prologue: ........................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction....................................................................................................................... 8 1: Orpheus among the Animals ....................................................................................... 13 1.1 The dogs are missing (My God!) ........................................................................... 17 1.2 Harmony and dominion: the animal as operatic spectacle .................................. 21 1.3 Performing (as) bears on the opera stage ............................................................. 23 1.4 The Great Bear ...................................................................................................... 26 2: A Theatre of Wonder in the Age of Reason ................................................................ 30 2.1 Mozart’s Avian Orpheus ........................................................................................ 33 2.2 Bird Machines ........................................................................................................ 36 2.3 Unreasonable Voices ............................................................................................. 40 3: Arthropoda: Forays into the World of Insect Opera ................................................... 46 3.1 Why Insect Opera? ................................................................................................ 46 3.2 Life Stories ............................................................................................................. 48 i: Pthirus .................................................................................................................. 49 ii: Melolontha .......................................................................................................... 58 Inescapable anthropomorphisms ........................................................................... 59 iii: Scolopendra/Anechura ....................................................................................... 63 4: ‘Sacculina’: From Orphean to Orphic .......................................................................... 66 4.1 Forced Performances ............................................................................................ 70 Affinities .................................................................................................................. 71 4.2 Crustacean meanings ............................................................................................ 75 4.3 Why do crabs sing? ................................................................................................ 77 5: Tettix ............................................................................................................................ 81 5.1 The failures of Orpheus ......................................................................................... 81 5.2 Eunomos ................................................................................................................ 82 5.3 Eunomic principles ................................................................................................ 83 5.4 The Classical cicada ............................................................................................... 85 5.5 Tettix ...................................................................................................................... 86 6: Insect Singers, Insect Drummers ................................................................................. 94 6.1 Insect musicking .................................................................................................... 94 6.2 The Cricket Seeks a Mate....................................................................................... 96 6.3 The performing audience ...................................................................................... 99 6.4 Performing the inadequate ................................................................................. 101 6.5 Found Scores: The Influence of Light .................................................................. 105 6.6 July, 1945-47: the score ....................................................................................... 108 6.7 July 1945-47 in performance ............................................................................... 111 6.8 You had to be there ............................................................................................. 113 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 115 Half-humans and hybrids: The Minotaur .................................................................. 117 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 119 Image credits: ............................................................................................................ 135 Arthropoda on Documentation Disc: ........................................................................ 135 6 Prologue: I spent most of the four summers until I was seventeen in windowless rooms, an entomological dogsbody at the Smithsonian Institution, working on a taxonomical production line. I was assigned first to the vast, uncatalogued Alexander collection, a resource unrivalled in the study of Tipulids. For all its exotic beauty, the language of science aspires not to poetry but to precision. Since 1966, thanks to Willi Hennig’s Phylogenetic Systematics, this precision does not merely indicate membership of a species, but marks out a place in evolutionary history, confirms the commonality of all life on Earth.1 Those unfamiliar with the Tipulidae might know them by their ambiguous, imprecise, if equally evocative names – ‘crane flies’, ‘mosquito-hunters’, or even the problematic ‘daddy-longlegs’. Figure 1: Tipula lunata, photographed by Malcolm Storey, 2015. The name is problematic because it is also a common English name for the Pholcid spider, while for most (but not all!) Americans, the daddy long-legs is yet another arachnid (Opilio)