When marionettes sing opera, they of course sing nothing at all. This paper examines the phenomenological paradox engendered when two such identifiers collide: the voice's centrality in opera and the marionette's voicelessness. Yet, it is marionette opera's very cultural hybridity that questions the assumptions and expectations associated with its constituent genres. The aesthetic, socio-political, and technological traits that result from the fusion of a pervasively elitist entertainment and a popular commercial enterprise have left marionette-theater opera on the outskirts of conventional opera-historical enquiry. Composers since Haydn have deemed them worthy performers of original works, while Marionettenspieler-the name given in German-speaking lands to puppeteers of marionettes-have long considered these wooden homunculi to be ideal for performing canonic operas. ![]() Marionettes have been singing opera for centuries.
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