OBERTO ...Oxford Brookes: Exploring Research Trends in Opera

Projects

Individual members of the OBERTO research unit are currently working on opera-related topics including:

• Historical periodisation: implications for Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss
• The use of Puccini’s music in film and popular culture
• Richard Wagner’s music dramas and German national identity
• Nineteenth-century opera criticism and reception studies
• The reception of opera and of opera singers in early-twentieth-century Britain
• The stage works of Ethel Smyth and transnational operatic culture

2012 conference

Our next day conference, entitled 'Operatic Masculinities', will take place at Brookes on Tuesday 11 May 2012. Follow the link to access the Call for Papers notice. Further details will appear here soon.

Recent activities

OBERTO activities in the academic year 2011-12 have included:

• Our inaugural conference (September 2011): ‘Beyond Press Cuttings: New Approaches to Reception in Opera Studies’
  A full list of abstracts as well as Katharine Ellis's response will be made available soon.
  Visit Hugo Shirley's blog to read his contribution "Fatal Conclusions: Criticism under fire", which was part of the round table discussion.
• A trip by Alexandra Wilson to the 77^th Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (San Francisco, November 2011) to deliver a paper entitled ‘Becoming a Modern Milo: Opera Propaganda, Imperialism and Masculinity in 1920s Britain’
• A visit to Brookes in spring 2012 by two Ethel Smyth scholars, Marleen Hoffmann (University of Detmold-Paderborn) and Angelika Silberbauer (University of Vienna), to work with Barbara Eichner
• A residency at Brookes as an International Visiting Fellow in spring 2012 by Professor Roberta Montemorra Marvin (University of Iowa). Professor Marvin is working with Alexandra Wilson on a number of projects and publications, teaching our graduate students and giving a public lecture relating to her research on Verdi and the Victorians
• An OBERTO group will attend the ‘Love to Death: Transforming Opera’ conference at Cardiff University (May-June 2012), which will incorporate the Royal Musical Association’s 2012 Annual Conference. Barbara Eichner and Alexandra Wilson will give papers at the conference

About us

Founder members of the OBERTO research unit:

Alexandra Wilson is a musicologist and cultural historian specialising in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century opera viewed within its critical, cultural and political contexts. A particular focus of her research has been the reception and politicisation of Puccini’s works: her monograph, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2007) was awarded the American Musicological Society’s Lewis Lockwood Award for a work of outstanding musicological scholarship.

More broadly, Alexandra Wilson’s research interests include operatic culture in fin-de-siècle Italy and in twentieth-century Britain; opera and nationalism; singers, recordings and constructs of celebrity; contemporary representations of opera through other media; debates about high and low culture; and the historiography of opera criticism. Wilson has shared her expertise with a wide audience by presenting numerous broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and by writing programme essays and giving educational talks for opera companies including the Royal Opera, English National Opera and Glyndebourne. Recent activities include presenting a paper about prima donna Amelita Galli-Curci at the 2009 Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Philadelphia; giving a talk on Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the 2010 BBC Proms; and presenting Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles for BBC Radio 3. Her book Opera: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld Publications) was published in June 2010.

Barbara Eichner is a music historian who counts, among her many and varied interests, the stage works of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Ethel Smyth in their historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts. Currently she is preparing for the publishing house Boydell & Brewer a monograph on Music, History and the Construction of a German National Identity (due to appear in 2012), several chapters of which investigate the role of opera in the formation of a German national identity in the second half of the ‘long’ nineteenth century. She is particularly interested in works that are rooted in national myth and history (e.g. the Nibelungs or ‘Hermann the German’), and the question of transnational and cross-cultural transfer and reception. She will also contribute entries on Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to the forthcoming Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia edited by Nicholas Vazsonyi.

Recent opera activities include presentations at the IMR London in 2009, ‘The Swan on the Barricades: Reconsidering the Case of Lohengrin’ and a paper at the international conference Opera and the Nation at Budapest in October 2010, entitled ‘From bestseller to box office hit: German opera in the age of historicism’ . Barbara Eichner is vice-president of the International Ethel Smyth Society established in 2009 for the scholarly investigation and further dissemination of the works of this fascinating composer.

For a list of publications by Barbara Eichner and Alexandra Wilson, please follow the links to their individual staff profiles.

Postgraduate Study:

At Oxford Brookes we offer opportunities for the study of opera at Masters and Doctoral level. Students following the ‘Music on Stage and on Screen’ pathway of the MA in Music explore recent critical thinking about the creation, performance and reception of opera and have the opportunity to write an extended dissertation on an opera-related topic of their choice. Recent MA dissertations in this area have examined the use of opera in film and contrasting approaches to the staging of Verdi’s Aida.

Staff in the Research Unit warmly welcome enquiries from applicants interested in studying for a PhD. Doctoral supervision is available in a wide variety of opera-related topics from the nineteenth century to the present day, with special emphasis on the German, Italian and British traditions of music theatre. If you would like to discuss any of these opportunities, please contact Alexandra Wilson.

Recent events:

Three members of OBERTO, Alexandra Wilson, Barbara Eichner and Ben Winters, presented a special OBERTO session entitled "New Horizons in the Historiography of Early Twentieth-Century Opera" at the Royal Musical Association annual conference ("Horizons", University of Sussex, 14-16 July 2011).

‘Beyond Press Cuttings: New Approaches to Reception in Opera Studies’

Oxford Brookes University, Tuesday 13 September 2011.

We are grateful for the generous financial assistance of the Royal Musical Association in putting on this conference.

Far from being a mere historical ‘footnote’, reception has come to be seen as central to the study of opera over the past decades. Reception studies have moved from the perfunctory inclusion of a few choice newspaper snippets to a fresh perspective on music that relocates the traditional focus on composers and works towards performances and audiences. The purpose of this conference is to consider the ways in which the parameters of operatic reception studies are shifting to include new sources, new media and new audiences, and in the process shedding new light on how societies have received and made use of opera, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

To see the conference programme, please click here.

Partners:

Ben Winters (The Open University) Formally an Associate Lecturer at Brookes, Ben has published widely on film music; as a result, he is interested in the interplay between opera and film evidenced in both the theoretical approaches taken by opera and film music scholars, and in operatic productions. His historical research has focussed on early twentieth-century Viennese opera –particularly the works of Erich Wolfgang Korngold – and he is continuing to explore mediated notions of the popular in interwar Zeitoper and operetta.

Collaborations

In order to further research on all things operatic, both nationally and internationally, we invite colleagues, research students and opera lovers to get in touch with us about future events and opportunities for collaboration.