Workshop

A series of informal lecture/discussions on opera held on Friday at 12 in the conference room (third floor) of the Music Department (light refreshments provided). Open to the Penn community as well as other institutions in the area, these informal meetings offer the opportunity to present and hear work-in-progress around a seminar table.

2020-23

The workshop is suspended and will resume in fall 2024.

2017-20

Music and Ritual

Focus on theater director Romeo Castellucci

Monteverdi at 450: Experiments in Text, Sound, Image, Movement

Calendar of the 2016-17 series

September 16

Missy Mazzoli (Mannes School of Music) on her opera “Breaking the Waves”

February 22

Rinaldo Alessandrini (Concerto Italiano): Performing “L’incoronazione di Poppea” Today

March 31

Mark Franko (Temple University): Voice and Movement: Theorizing Early Modern Performance Hybridities

May 5

Maria Ryan (University of Pennsylvania): Angels in the Archive: Animating the Past in “Written on Skin”

Calendar of the 2015-16 series

October 2 (2015)

Davide Ceriani (Rowan University)

The Opera House as Political Institution: TheTeatro Reale dell’Opera in Fascist Rome

October 23 (Salvatori Lecture and part of Ciao Philadelphia 2015)

Lily Kass (University of Pennsylvania)

British Patriotism in Italian Opera: The Cultural Translations of Caractacus (1759-1797)

November 20

Geoffrey Burgess (Eastman School of Music)

Framing the Tragédie en musique: Defining a Genre

January 22

Lembit Beecher (composer)

Composing Opera Today

February 9 at 5:15 (with Colloquia Series)

Jennifer Higdon (Curtis Institute of Music)

On “Cold Mountain” (performed at Opera Philadelphia 2/5-14)

February 26

Christine Jeanneret (University of Copenhagen and Italian Academy of Advanced Studies at Columbia University)

Giuseppe Sarti in Copenhagen: Cultural Transfer and Opera in Migration, 1747-1782

Calendar of the 2014-’15 series

January 30 (2015)

Luca Cottini (Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, Villanova University)

Title: Gramophones, Sound Recording, and the New Languages of Music

March 6

Micaela Baranello (Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Swarthmore College)

Visit her blog!

Title: Operetta Canon Formation and the Journey to Prestige

March 20

Elise Bonner (Ph.D. candidate in Music, Princeton University)

Title: Opera Buffa and the Pursuit of Happiness

April 10

Stefano Lorenzetti (Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University)

Title: From musica reservata to Early Opera: Memoria, Pronunciatio and the Art of Singing from Memory

May 1

Christin Thomas (Ph.D. Candidate in Music History, Yale University)

Title: Regulating Operatic Boundaries: Copyright and the Emergence of Cinema