The oft-cited observations of Italian librettist Carlo Goldoni as he described his first visit to the Académie Royale de Musique in 1763 are usually presented with an emphasis on what Goldoni missed. Accustomed as he was to eighteenth-century Italian opera, he could not hear a single aria in the French opera: “I waited for the aria … The dancers appeared: I thought the act was over, not an aria. I spoke of this to my neighbor who scoffed at me and assured me that there had been six arias in the different scenes which I had just heard. How could this be? I am not deaf; the voice was always accompanied by instruments … but I assumed it was all recitative.”

Considerations of exoticism and particularly of orientalism in opera seem to focus, either explicitly or implicitly, on generalities – even when scholars have looked at only a few isolated works taken almost exclusively from ‘serious’ or ‘great’ repertories. However, in order to understand this complex phenomenon in its contemporary context, it is necessary to work from a knowledge of the extraordinary diversity of ‘exotic’ opera.

Condemned as degenerate art during the Third Reich, German Zeitopern and their artistic treatment of technological infiltration during die Weimar Republic have sparked a variety of new research projects, world-wide musical performances and CD releases from Decca/London in a continuing series entitled ‘Entartete Kunst.’ Manifestos were written in response to the penetration of technology into nearly every aspect of human life, envisaging a future where human beings would interact organically with their new urban environments. Expressionism, Americanism and the concept of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) symbolized fresh driving forces that emerged most visibly in opera. In contrast to pre-war Romanticism and Wagnerian mythology, the ‘New Objectivity’ demonstrated a radical commitment to the modern environment, focusing on visible, objective reality rather dian on the emotions of the artist. Particularly in Zeitopern, composers like Max Brand, Paul Hindemith, and Ernst Krenek embraced contemporary ideas of progress, new technological inventions, modern electronic communication systems and means of transportation as props, story topics and artistic vehicles to introduce new sound-effects. In several instances modern technology appeared as simply anodier stage-prop in die long history of opera stage design. In die context of European conceptions of Americanism, technology was pardy understood as a threat to the establishment's reverence for Romantic high culture. And yet in many instances it was also a welcome tool in the project of redirecting all the arts from their stagnant, inflexible pasts to modern, progressive forms of contemporary entertainment. Such diverse attitudes to the potent symbolism of the machine indicate a conflict inherent in aesthetic practice at the time and raise fundamental questions. Do composers successfully represent human beings as creative and autonomous individuals while simultaneously introducing technological images of dominance and depersonalization? If there are contradictory aspects in the representation of technology, how do they relate to the various aesthetic views of the 1920s? Max Brand's central work and acclaimed prototype of Zeitopern, Maschinist Hopkins (1928), brings the world of technology and its sophisticated artifacts to the musical stage. A close analysis reveals basic contradictions, symptomatic of the era, in the composer's embrace of modern technology.

Film's attraction to opera began not with the technical possibility of synchronising the operatic voice with the image, but earlier, in the silent era. In the New York Times of 27 August 1910 Thomas Edison declared: ‘We'll be ready for the moving picture shows in a couple of months, but I'm not satisfied with that. I want to give grand opera.’ What did silent film seek in opera? Would a silent film of or about opera have any meaning? What are the possibilities for silent opera? How would a mute operatic voice appear in film?