Musical narration, performance and excess: the creation of horror in the Swedish opera Tintomara by Lars Johan Werle

Abstract

Johanna Ethnersson Pontara examines the different layers in the opera Tintomara by Lars Johan Werle and Leif Söderström (Stockholm 1973), based on the short story The Queen's Jewel by Carl Johan Love Almqvist. Pontara’s thesis claims that the opera's message is expanded by the composition technique. By assembling the different styles Werle brings the relationship between narration and performance to oscillation. He uses his experience as a film music composer to create shock effects, such as those caused by the music in horror films, in order to perform them on the listeners' bodies. Ethnersson Pontara applies film theories to reveal how the orientation and disposition of the hermaphrodite Tintomaras is undermined by the power disparities between male subjects and female objects as they are traditionally represented in romances, porn and horror films.