Live Music and the Rise of the ‘Enormodome’, an article written by Ludovic Hunter-Tilney and published February 10, 2024, in the Financial Times starts with a question: “With hologram second acts, high-tech sound and light shows and the mushrooming of mega arenas, pop performance is entering a whole new era. But does it still count as live?”

Given the multimedia, interart and mega marketing enterprise that characterizes today’s pop concerts, Hunter-Tilney consulted Prof. Anke Finger, a specialist on intermediality, about making some comparisons:

“Would it be too highfalutin to label this synthesis, when it works, as an example of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork”? Anke Finger, professor of German studies and media studies at the University of Connecticut and a specialist on the concept, thinks not. The term Gesamtkunstwerk refers to an artwork that unites different forms of art. Coined in the early 19th century, its most prominent advocate was Richard Wagner, who located the concept in opera’s blend of drama, music, words, singing and dance. “It is an aesthetic ambition to borderlessness,” Finger explains. “And second, a political blending of art and life. And third, there’s a metaphysical element, an aspiration to the spiritual.” The Wagnerian association has given the concept a totalitarian taint due to the composer’s adoption as a cultural totem by the Nazis. But Finger prefers to emphasise the communal aspect of the total artwork, an act of bringing people as well as art forms together. Total artwork historians look back as far as ancient Greek theatre and the birth of democracy to find examples. “I think today’s pop concert, especially the stadium pop concert, is the ultimate expression of the total artwork,” Finger says. “But there’s one condition. It depends on the emotional experience connecting the audience so as to create a community. Because the community aspect is really important.”

The full article with interactive visuals is linked above.