Iris ter Schiphorst
ANNA'S WAKE - 3D opera (1992)
for the WP in Berlin, 1993
ANNO A – Beginning of psychoanalysis or end of opera? In between:
ANNA O – A voice or a woman? In images, sounds, or words? A music:
O ANNA – O tell me everything about ANNA... I want to hear everything about ANNA… Ah, you know ANNA...? Yes, of course, we all know ANNA… Tell me everything. Tell me now. You’ll be thunderstruck when you hear it.
The 3D-Oper ANNA S’ WAKE links, in a playful manner, the history of opera with the case history of the first hysteric allegedly cured by psychoanalysis, ANNA O (Bertha Pappenheim), from whom Sigmund Freud adopted the term 'Talking cure'. Narrated in three visually and musically differently accentuated parts is the versatility of a woman – ANNA – which entails her various forms of appearance and expression. ANNA cannot be pinned down; final definitions do not catch up with her. If she was just ironizing the gesture of an opera diva while singing Bel Canto, in the next moment she can already be affected by her own melancholic image. The moods and images shift, swinging back and forth like a swing. But through different times, ANNA is driven by her self-staging at least as much as she seems exposed to the change of images and sounds, the medial fixations around her.