We are delighted to share the programme for the forthcoming OBERTO 2018 conference, which will take place at Oxford Brookes University (Headington Hill Hall) on Tuesday, 11 September 2018. Participation is free, including lunch and refreshments, but please reserve a place by sending an email to oberto@brookes.ac.uk.
Opera and Violence
9.45 am: Welcome
10am: Session 1: Exoticism – Colonialism
Francesco Bracci (University of Bern): ‘The Violence of the Weak: Colonialism, Violence and Irrationality in 19th Century Opera’
Richard Langham Smith (Royal College of Music): ‘Hardened Criminals; Softened Violence. Bloodshed in Carmen’
11am: Coffee break
11.30 am: Session 2a: Violence in Contemporary Stage Works
George Haggett (Royal Holloway): ‘“heart hair mouth nail hand skin blood”: Hearing the Thirteenth-Century Body in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written on Skin’
Nadine Scharfetter (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz): ‘Olga Neuwirth’s American Lulu (2006-2011): Alban Berg’s Lulu against the backdrop of the civil rights movement’
Annalise Smith (Cornell University): ‘Beautiful Music for Ugly Situations: Operatic Depictions of Sexual Violence’
11.30 am: Session 2b: Abusive Relationships
Emma Kavanagh (University of Nottingham): ‘“Non! Non!”: Pelléas et Mélisande, Symbolism, and Issues of Consent’
Robert Rawson (Canterbury Christ Church University): ‘Jenůfa and Kaťa’s public and private reactions to the violence of samodurstvo in Janáček’s Jenůfa and Kaťa Kabanová’
Sid Wolters-Tiedge (University of Bayreuth): ‘Violently funny? Thoughts about staging violence in Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy’
1pm: LUNCH
AFTERNOON
2pm: Session 3a: Dis/ability and Violence
Christina Guillaumier (Royal College of Music): ‘War in the Late Operas of Sergei Prokofiev’
Charlotte Armstrong (University of York): ‘(Re)Interpreting Impairment: Disability and Moral Degeneracy in Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten at Komische Oper Berlin (January 2018)’
2pm: Session 3b: Reception and (post-)Fascism
Georg Burgstaller (RILM New York): ‘No More Storm: The Reception of Britten’s Peter Grimes in Occupied Austria, 1947’
Nicolò Palazetti (University of Birmingham): ‘“Gronda il sangue dalle più vaghe apparenze” The Italian Premiere of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in 1938’
3pm: Tea break
3.30: Session 4: Mozart and Violence in Contemporary Stagings
Margaret Cormier (McGill University): ‘Reimagining the Seraglio in the Twenty First Century: Staging Violence Against Women in Two Productions of Die Entführung aus dem Serail’
Alessandro Talevi (freelance opera director): ‘Violence at the end of the pier’
Laura Attridge (freelance opera director): ‘Leaning into the Discomfort: Approaching Classic Operatic Repertoire in 2018’
5pm: Closing session (chaired by Mark Berry)
Maria Thomas (University of Hertfordshire): ‘“I was there”: A reflection on Michieletto’s Guillaume Tell at the Royal Opera House’
Group discussion
OBERTO 