Russell Burdekin is a postgraduate student at Oxford Brookes University, following the nineteenth-century music pathway of the MA in Music

It is not an unusual sight in parts of Italy to see a couple of resplendent ceremonial carabinieri stood at the main door of the opera house for an opera première. The opening night of Halévy’s La Juive at Opera Vlaanderen in Gent on April 15 saw a guard of Belgian police, some with sub machine guns. After last year’s shootings at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, the management were clearly taking no chances that someone might take the opera’s title as a provocation.

La Juive was one of the grandest of the Paris grand operas with one newspaper commenting on the enormous Act 1 procession that “The Opéra may become a power capable of throwing its armies into the balance of power in Europe” [i]. The libretto by Scribe was typical of his style with an unlikely series of events and coincidences vaguely based on historical incidents, in this case in 15^th century Constance, and culminating in a sensational ending. It seems that Meyerbeer might have been approached initially to write the music [ii] but it soon devolved on Halévy and the opera premiered on February 23, 1835. Ruth Jordan claimed that the story fired Halévy’s imagination because it brought him “face to face with his [Jewish] heritage” [iii]. However, he did not respond by making use of Jewish music to any great extent nor could much of the music be called particularly inspired; “as for popular music, it has none” was Donizetti’s opinion after seeing it [iv]. However, other composers, including Mahler and Offenbach and, more surprisingly, Wagner, have been more complimentary and, after a shaky start, the opera firmly established itself in the 19^th century repertoire.

The opera is a rare beast today and I was particularly interested that Opera Vlaanderen had hired Peter Konwitschny as the director, who is known for his radical interpretations, such as that of La Traviata at ENO in 2013.   To complement the opera, Opera Vlaanderen had also organised a two day conference on Judaism in Opera, during which Konwitschny discussed some of his decisions. He explained that he had directed little in the way of French opera, other than Carmen, and had been completely unfamiliar with La Juive until being invited to direct it. He talked of his Brechtian approach, no doubt a legacy of his East German upbringing, that aimed to avoid superficial sentimental emotion (“it’s not just about two poor Jews”) in the pursuit of a longer lasting and more deeply considered response ( “the audience should come out resisting intolerance”). More personally, he had asked himself whether he, as a German, was allowed to criticise a Jew – no doubt having in mind Eléazar’s own intolerance and morally ambiguous behaviour, particularly his lack of honesty with Rachel about her parentage. He then stated that he considered that the opera was too long with too many blocks to the dramatic flow and that the music was not good and had too many choruses. He had thus set about refashioning the opera to provide an exciting and suspenseful evening rather than just a long evening and certainly succeeded in his aim with an absolutely cracking performance that illuminated the spirit if not always kept to the letter of the opera. While this stance is anathema to some opera lovers, it was clear that Konwitschny had given the project considerable thought and was not just wanting to be different or to shock, the motivation that many often ascribe to non-traditional productions.

Konwitschny saw the opera not primarily as Christian and Jew but as persecuting majority and persecuted minority, an essay in intolerance. To this end all wore modern dress with no distinction except that the Christians wore blue gloves and the Jews yellow. Thus he claimed to have deracinated the opera, although I doubt whether many would be convinced about this even if they might agree about his broader message. I wondered whether it was deliberate that he chose yellow for the Jewish gloves bearing in mind the yellow badge that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany but which would have cut across his avowed neutral approach or whether it was an oversight. The set had a huge rose window and other stained glass at the rear, which were lit up for certain scenes and otherwise the main features were groups of vertical metal bars that were arranged in various structures according to the scene. Thus it was a fairly minimal, functional set with no indication of time or place.

©Annemie Augustijns, courtesy of Oper Vlaanderen

Typical of his reworking of the opera was his removal of the overture so that we plunged straight into the organ introduction to the “Te Deum” and the gathering of the Christians under the leadership of Cardinal de Brogni. Around a further 30 minutes was cut from the earlier part of Act 1 and its lengthy scene-setting. In Act 2, he moved Eléazar’s cavatine to the end of the act because it does not have any specific bearing on the action at that point but is of a more philosophic nature and he wanted to keep up the dramatic impetus with Eudoxie’s entrance immediately following Rachel’s rising suspicion about Léopold when he does not eat the unleavened bread. Act 3 caused the greatest discussion amongst the next day’s conference attendees because when Rachel publicly accused Léopold of being her lover she was shown wearing a suicide belt. Some delegates felt that this ran against Rachel’s role as a mediator and the whole thrust of her personality. Unfortunately, the chairman called time on Konwitschny before he could adequately explain his ideas behind it but he said that he did not consider her as nice a person as some did and seemed to have been thinking in terms of her wanting to destroy the patrimony that was suppressing the world.

©Annemie Augustijns, courtesy of Oper Vlaanderen

 The end of the act saw the chorus, wearing various coloured gloves, constructing an endless series of suicide belts, presumably intimating that we are all complicit in prejudice and its manifest evils. Act 4, in which Rachel and Eudoxie come together in order to save the man who has betrayed them both, had their duet morph into a dance as they celebrated coming together to rise above the hatred that had hitherto permeated the opera and in washing their hands together both divested their gloves.

One of Konwitschny’s techniques was to have singers come out into the auditorium and mingle with the audience while singing, often having them seem to make asides to the audience or to look to the audience for support such as when Rachel, in the auditorium, lambasted Leopold, on the stage, for his duplicity. It gave the exchange a feeling of overhearing someone else’s argument and a much greater involvement than with a traditional stage confrontation. While this sort of manoeuvre is not new, I have never seen it put to such telling effect, although I did sympathise with the woman who sat with her hands over her ears as the volume must have been pretty daunting when Eléazar sang the big hit number “Rachel, quand du Seigneur” a couple of feet away from her.

The end is a problem. Scribe, as was his usual practice, aimed for an arresting stage coup with no regard for its musical potential [v]. Here the opera called for Eléazar and Rachel to be flung into cauldrons of boiling oil with Eléazar revealing that Rachel was Cardinal de Brogni’s daughter as this happened. Donizetti wrote on seeing it, “Too much reality – the final scene too horrifying, the more horrifying because of so much illusion” [vi]. For today’s director perhaps there can be no appropriate realisation living as we do under the shadow of the Holocaust. Here, Konwitschny had them walk up some stairs and then out of sight, while de Brogni fell down the stairs in his surprise and anguish. It served but lacked any real emotional punch.

©Annemie Augustijns, courtesy of Oper Vlaanderen

 All the roles were strongly delineated, even Eudoxie who can be a somewhat shadowy figure, and all were acted with great energy and commitment. The singing (Eléazar – Roberto Sacca, Rachel – Asmik Grigorian, de Brogni – Dmitry Ulyanov, Léopold – Randall Bills, Eudoxie – Nicole Chevalier, Ruggiero – Toby Girling) was excellent particularly when one considers the very physical acting that they were often asked to do at the same time and the whole enterprise was well supported by the orchestra under Tomás Netopil.

While some opera fans will no doubt decry such manipulation of the opera, it was all in all an intense and exhilarating evening and the audience clearly appreciated it. Unfortunately, on leaving the theatre past the armed police, they needed no reminding that intolerance is still very much with us.

[i] Quoted in Hugh Macdonald, “La Juive”, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Vol 2, edited by Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Reference Ltd., 1998) , p.926.

[ii] Mark Everist, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), p.221.

[iii] Ruth Jordan, Fromental Halevy. (London: Kahn & Averill, 1997), p.59.

[iv] Quote from a letter to Innocenzo Giampieri in Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti. (London: Lowe & Brydone, 1964), p.108.

[v] “The denouement for which music can do nothing” wrote Donizetti of Scribe’s ending for Dom Sébastien – Zaida and Sébastien fall from the rope they are climbing down to escape – quoted in William Ashbrook, Donizetti and his operas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),  p.187.

[vi] Herbert Weinstock Loc. Cit.

If there is one occasion when you hear me sigh: “Sounded like a good idea at the time”, it’s usually when I’ve accepted a conference invitation for mid-semester. Going to a European capital, catching up with old friends and meeting new colleagues are wonderful prospects – six months before the actual event. Back in April, there was optimism a-plenty that I would not just find the time to jet to Vienna and back again, but also to write a fairly original paper on a topic only marginally related to my established research interests in opera and German national identity. Four weeks before the event the flights were duly booked, but the confidence about the presentation had largely evaporated. How did I ever think that I could contribute something meaningful to Christoph Willibald Gluck – Mythen, Bilder, Diskurse, when the line-up featured specialists from the critical Gluck editions at Frankfurt and Salzburg? How would my paper on Gluck and German national opera slot into a programme which also featured presentations on Gluck’s 19th-century biographies, the concept of operatic reform or the image of Gluck as a classicist? I vividly saw myself playing “quotation bingo”: erasing from my paper one quotation after the other as the preceding speakers bagged all the juicy soundbites from Herder, Brendel, Marx et al. So it was with some apprehension that I set out on 22 October for Vienna, my paper completed (or at least written) for better or worse, largely thanks to a kind colleague who had taken on my first-year lecture.

And then it all turned out completely different. The conference itself was impeccably organised by Profs Michele Calella (Vienna), Klaus Pietschmann (Mainz) and Thomas Betzwieser (Frankfurt) and took place in the cosy new rooms of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik (Austrian Society for Music), nestled between the State Opera and the art gallery “Albertina”. As it is customary for symposia on the continent, participation was free, which meant that the conference was attended by a good crowd of students, opera lovers and members of the general public, so conspicuously absent from many conferences in this country because of forbidding fees for bad coffee and limp biscuits. (Actually Michele Calella’s conference assistants spoiled us with home-made muffins.) Discussions were lively, vigorous and well-informed, and we made full use of the 45-minute slots allocated to each presentation. As the topic of Gluck reception was quite new to me, I learned a lot about performances of Gluck in Sweden during the reign of Gustav III (Jens Duffner), Russian culture wars over Gluck (Yuliya Shein), or Debussy’s attempts to erase Gluck’s pernicious Teutonic influence from the annals of French music (William Gibbons).

The highlights for me, however, were two presentations with quite dry-sounding titles: Melanie Unseld’s paper on the Gluck master-narratives in 19th-century biographies of the composer, and Arnold Jacobshagen’s musings on operatic reform and reform opera in 19th-century music historiography. Both speakers took their departure from a special branch of the German intellectual tradition that plays a small role in Anglophone musicology: Begriffsgeschichte, i.e. the history of technical terms and concepts, and Gattungsgeschichte, the history of musical genres. Both historiographical tools have been side-lined in recent years because they seem to sit badly with the myth-busting, hegemony-exposing impetus of the New Musicology, and because in the wrong hands they guarantee hours of unalleviated boredom. (I vividly remember a university seminar presentation I attended as a student where the unfortunate speaker started his analysis of theological messages of a specific Bach cantata by explaining the etymology of “cantata” in the early 17th century, working his way towards the 1720s with excruciating slowness.) The Gluck presentations by my senior colleagues from Oldenburg and Cologne, however, superbly demonstrated how a careful dissection of historiographical concepts illuminates our understanding of music’s place within the wider intellectual tradition of an era.

Melanie Unseld, who has wrote her Habilitation on music history and life writings, investigated a selection of early Gluck biographies, distilling a catalogue of narrative stereotypes (in academic German parlance now called a “Narrativ”, with a long final syllable) such as the humble origins of the artist in a Bohemian village, the misunderstood genius in philistine Vienna, the triumph against adversity in the Parisian querelles. Such narratives sound familiar enough, but Gluck’s “real” life story, as far as it can be reconstructed today, is singularly unsuited to the familiar fairy-tale of the musical genius à la Beethoven. With the help of the narrative tropes, however, the non-Beethovenian aspects of Gluck’s career simply vanish from the storyline: his shrewd business sense (Gluck died a very wealthy man indeed), his uneventful private life (no “immortal beloved” but a marriage that appears to have been as happy as anybody’s), or the fact that he continued writing traditional operas and even ballets after he had allegedly invented reform opera. Melanie Unseld then exemplified her theoretical reflections with a two-page anonymous biography of Gluck written sometime in the 1850s or 1860s, where Gluck is hailed as Wagner’s predecessor but, strangely, his short stay in Copenhagen receives much more attention than decades of Habsburg service in Vienna, playing to the interests of a North-German and progressivist readership.

The title of Arnold Jacobshagen’s paper sounded similar to Unseld’s, but he tackled the operatic reformer from quite a different angle: by tracing the very term “reform” to its origin in late-15th-century theology and church politics. As Jacobshagen argued, thanks to the historiography of the Reformation the term “reform” was understood as a genuinely German form of improving things with gradual and careful steps. In Enlightenment writings, the term was often still used in its French spelling – réforme – but towards the end of the century increasingly construed in opposition – or even as an antidote – to the dangerous French revolutionary tendencies which threatened to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Whereas French music historians customarily hailed Gluck as a revolutionary of French opera, German music historians celebrated Gluck as the master of operatic reform. The dialogue between these seemingly straightforward terms – reform and revolution – suddenly opened up a whole vista of historiographical configurations where not only Gluck, but all 19th-century attempts to push ahead with new artistic development appeared in a new light.

My paper came straight after Unseld’s and Jacobshagen’s, and I have to admit feeling rather self-conscious that my paper lacked a comparable theoretical or methodological foundation, as I placed Gluck in the development of German national opera before and after Wagner. Although no German writer of the 19th century seriously doubted Gluck’s essentially German nationality and national character (see also Eric Schneeman’s inspired blog post about this issue), there was no denying that he had never written a German opera (or even just an opera in German), but concentrated his creative efforts on Italian opere serie and French tragédies. Nevertheless Gluck’s name was often invoked to ward off the dangerous enthusiasm for contemporary Italian opera, playing as it were the bible and garlic to the Rossinian vampires. But that does not mean that his music was a pivotal or even permanent presence on the German stages, nor that young composers invariably looked towards Gluck for guidance and inspiration; Wagner was not the only one for whom Gluck was comfortably dead and buried. Whatever the academic merits of my paper (it can be read in full on academia.edu), at least most of the jokes came off and I introduced a running gag to the conference: Gluck and the German forest. For the published version in the conference proceedings – the organisers will make us work a bit more for the comfortable hotel and the opera tickets – I  feel sorely tempted to replace my rather misguided conference title “Zurück in die Zukunftsmusik” with the snappier “Gluck im deutschen Wald”. Side-lining Wagner in a discussion of German national opera is, after all, sometimes not a bad idea.

Biography and life-writing are often central to musicology, and to opera studies in particular. Although my own research does not involve writing a biography of any particular performer, I am investigating the professional – and also the personal – lives of a number of singers who worked at the Theater an der Wien in the 1870s and 1880s. When I saw an announcement for a day workshop called ‘Quest for Materials: Life-Writing Challenges’, run by the Oxford Centre for Life Writing (OCLW), I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to learn techniques for life-writing, particularly as the workshop was directed by Hermione Lee, with Lyndall Gordon, Clare Morgan and Elleke Boehmer, all eminent authors.

I had expected the workshop to explore the nuts and bolts of life-writing: research techniques, or how to search and collate archival finds. Instead, with the participants divided into three groups of about a dozen people, led by Lyndall Gordon, Clare Morgan and Elleke Boehmer, we spent the day in a series of discussions about the challenges – ethical, authorial and paradoxical – of life-writing in a variety of contexts. The participants in my group included researchers from different backgrounds working on biographies, architectural, oral, military and family history. What became obvious was that whether one is working in an academic setting – either as a graduate student or an established academic – or working independently, life-writers face problems which are applicable to musicology.  These problems include:

• Finding too much material in archives
• Finding too little material in archives
• Finding vast amounts of material which is not relevant to one’s research, and which takes a lot of time to search with no concrete results
• Feeling lost, helpless and thwarted (by the archive…)
• Finding ‘gaps’ in archival material which can make research feel incomplete or unverified

Then, assuming that the researcher strikes archival gold or even silver (sometimes unexpected or initially irrelevant material can turn out to be ground-breaking), there is the problem of writing it up. Almost everybody in the room said that when writing about a life, they have difficulty in establishing an authorial voice which is appropriate to the subject, and which allows the subject to live. Another problem which arises for many life-writers is that of interpretation.  To what extent can the author reflect and interpret their primary source findings?  Here, two researchers (PhD students in English Literature and History) commented that reflection and interpretation are one difference between doing a purely academic piece of work – a thesis or journal article – and a biography which might be intended for popular and academic audiences. In the first, an interpretation (as a form of criticism) is imperative for establishing an argument. But, in a published biography, some editors prefer that that ‘facts’ are left to stand by themselves. Of course, the manner of assembling the facts and establishing a narrative is a form of interpretation which is silent, and as subjective as obvious editorialising. Both Lyndall Gordon and Hermione Lee emphasised that as life-writing becomes more experimental in form, there is room for exploring new forms of narrative in which the lives of even the ‘greatest’ people can be approached from creative angles, which require interpretation and criticism to achieve authority.

An example of where interpretation or imagining is necessary could occur in a case where a lucky author finds letters written by their subject and letters written by friends or family of the subject. Such a case allows the author to pick apart the different letter-writers’ view of the subject and his or her thoughts and actions. Even business letters – which may appear mundane and without ‘human’ interest – can paint a compelling picture of a public figure.  Our discussion of this topic led to considering how we understand talent, genius or creativity, and – when writing about a creative figure or artist – whether or not to separate the artistry and the person. Everybody in our group had read biographies of an outstanding creative person in which the author’s compulsion to expose every negative characteristic of their subject had made the reader feel uncomfortable. Julia Kavanagh’s Rudolf Nureyev: The Life was cited as an example. Several people in our group had read this book, and agreed that the author’s emphasis on Nureyev’s ‘bad’ behaviour had changed their attitude to his unique talent as a dancer. This was not a sensation that they enjoyed. It was unsettling. At least two of us agreed that this emphasis on Nureyev’s negative traits – whether his poor treatment of colleagues on stage, or his promiscuity – became prurient.  It had the effect of forcibly diminishing Nureyev’s extraordinary artistic legacy by not allowing the reader to interpret the material. Hagiography is equally frustrating, but we questioned what was to be gained by writing an exposé

To recover from this passionate debate, practical matters were discussed, especially the most difficult elements of writing anything: how to begin and where to end. All agreed that the beginning is difficult. How to introduce a character, and how to illustrate context are both problems which can halt the momentum of a piece. Lyndall Gordon said there were no magic formulae; she found that choosing a particular moment in a subject’s life – a moment she had found revealing or immediately moving – was often the key.  This allows the reader to ‘meet’ the subject. Gordon cited her biography of T.S. Eliot, which opens with a study of Wyndham Lewis’s portrait of Eliot, and her 2005 book Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft which begins with Wollstonecraft’s personal reaction to arriving in revolutionary France and witnessing the Terror at first hand. Ending the story is another problem: a life, paradoxically, does not end with a death. An after-life is often more important, especially in the case of lives cut short (think of Schubert, or Wilfred Owen). The reverberations of a subject’s life are integral to their reception and reputation.

To conclude, a representative from each of the day’s groups, and the groups’ tutors spoke briefly to summarise the discussions in each room.  Although some of the points are more applicable to authoring a book, these are ideas which are useful for any piece of academic writing, and the common priorities revealed were:

• Establish who you are writing for, and why.
• Decide the extent to which you will ‘editorialise’ and remain consistent
• Consider your attitude to the past. Do not feel oblige to excuse a subject’s behaviour or attitudes, even if they now seem dated or offensive.
• ‘Let the past and its oddness provoke us!’ (as one participant said).
• What is meant by ‘authenticity’? To what extent do ‘facts’ exist? Mediate between contradictory ‘facts’ about a subject’s life. Never exclude what you don’t like.
• True authenticity lies in the writer’s passionate commitment to (but perhaps not involvement with) the subject.

This is just a snapshot of the day. I recommend attending events run by the OCLW for stimulation, motivation, and the opportunity to meet some remarkable colleagues.

Nureyev link

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/sep/23/biography.features1

OCLW link

https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clusters/life-writing

Oxford Brookes University

150th Anniversary PhD Scholarship

Edgar Degas, The Ballet from Robert le Diable, 1871

OBERTO are very pleased to offer a three year full-time PhD scholarship to a new student commencing in January 2015. The successful applicant will receive an annual bursary of £7,000 for three years (with no inflation increase), and fees will be paid by the University. The candidate will need to demonstrate that in addition to the scholarship other funding is available for them to successfully complete the programme in full-time study.

The successful candidate will work within the School of Arts under the supervision of Dr Barbara Eichner.

Topic of research: Religion and ‘the Church’ on the Nineteenth-Century Stage

This project will investigate the manifold ways in which religion, spirituality and ‘the Church’ were represented on the nineteenth-century (operatic) stage. The ‘long’ nineteenth century is often characterised as an era of secularism, rationalism and materialism. Despite this – or perhaps as a counter-reaction to it – religion, rituals and mysticism continued to fascinate composers, librettists and singers. The nineteenth-century stage offers particularly rich pickings in this area, from the use of chorales as musical markers of historical distance to the salacious nuns’ ballet in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable.

This project will allow the recipient of the doctoral award to investigate the representation of religion on the nineteenth-century stage from a number of angles, such as (but not restricted to):

• musical historicism and the sounds of religious music
• religious roles and voice types, from the ethereal nun to the evil cardinal
• influences from other genres, such as oratorio, cantata or liturgical music
• church criticism, parody, blasphemy and censorship
• staging religious rites
• contemporary church politics
• encounters with non-Christian religions and atheism

The scope of the project is not limited to a particular national ‘school’ or geographic area; it will build on the prior knowledge and interests of the recipient of the scholarship. However, a comparative approach is strongly encouraged, and at least one of the major traditions (Italian, German, or French) should be included.

The recipient of the scholarship will be part of the thriving research culture of OBERTO. All our staff and PhD students are working on topics that concern opera’s relationship to broader cultural debates and questions of identity during the long nineteenth century. The recipient of the scholarship would be encouraged to take a pro-active role within the research unit, and to communicate their research findings to wider audiences.

Further information about the OBERTO research unit can be found at www.obertobrookes.com.

For information about the prospective supervisor, Dr Barbara Eichner, consult her profile on http://oxfordbrookes.academia.edu/BarbaraEichner. Informal inquiries to barbara.eichner@brookes.ac.uk are welcome.

If you would like to apply you should request an application pack from Ms Zane Kalnina tdestudentships@brookes.ac.uk, quoting ‘Religion in Opera’ in the subject line. Fully completed applications must be sent to the same email address by 31 October 2014.

As part of the application you should submit a CV, a research proposal (maximum 3 pages), together with a supporting statement summarising your reasons for undertaking this project, preparation undertaken for your project, as well as a summary of your previous research experience.

Please be advised that the selection process may involve an interview on 13 November 2014, and the successful candidate would be expected to commence in the research degree programme in January 2015.

At the end of our recent conference Beyond Black Tie and Bubbly: Rescuing Opera from Stereotypes, I tried to kick off the general, final discussion with the following ‘alphabet’ that unites beloved buzzwords, common clichés and time-honoured tropes.

A         is for accessibility: opera is more accessible today thanever before in its history – something that’s easily forgotten

B         is for bums on seats: the bottom line of the impresario

C         is for crossover: way forward or cul-de-sac?

D         is for dumbing down: the pet hateof the conservative establishment

E         is for education: can we be taught to love opera?

F          is for fan base: who are they, and what keeps them happy?

G         is for government funding: predictably enrages ‘the taxpayer’, though considerably lower than in many other European countries

H         is for HD Cinema Broadcast: currently the Holy Grail in reaching audiences beyond the opera house

I          is for impact: the persistent need to prove that opera and opera studies are relevant to society

J          is for journalists: is it them who won’t let the clichés die?

K         is for Katherine Jenkins: you know, the opera singer (or is it ‘opera singer’?)

L         is for luxury: see also class

M        is for marketing: hype, hype, hype

N         is for new audiences: what’s wrong with the old ones?

O         is for outreach to ‘ordinary people‘: the group that allegedly would never go to the opera

P          is for privilege: see also class

Q         is for quality versus quantity

R         is for Royal Opera House versus Royal Variety Show

S          is for sexing it up: see also dumbing down

T          is for taste: is opera an expensive acquired taste?

U         is for Unterhaltungsmusik: indeed, opera was and is still part of that

V         is for Victorian popular opera: when did opera stop to be enjoyed by the many in seaside resorts, music halls and brass band concerts?

W        is for working class: does it make some people feel apologetic about liking opera?

X         is for X-Factor: plenty of opera there, but is it the ‘real thing’?

Y         is for Why do we worry about operatic stereotypes?

Z          is for …

… at this point the discussion took over, and a long, spirited and fruitful discussion it was!

On Tuesday 17^th June the inaugural Opera Research Students’ Conference was held at Oxford Brookes University, hosted by OBERTO. This conference, organised by OBERTO postgraduate students, attracted 14 speakers from the UK and beyond. The speakers spoke in 6 sessions, encompassing a diverse range of approaches, from economics and psychology to composition and archaeology.

Things kicked off with two parallel sessions, one of which was entitled ‘Performance Practices’. The first speaker in this session was Matteo Paoletti (University of Genoa), who spoke about the career of director Giorgio Strehler and his pursuit of a ‘lyrical theatre of art’. Strehler believed that for this ideal to be attained, singers had to be ‘theatrical animals.’ Strehler died during the rehearsals for his 1998 production of Così fan tutte and no one has ever studied his work. Paoletti’s fascinating paper was followed by one from Anna Koukoullis (Oxford Brookes University), who spoke passionately about the evolving role of acting on the operatic stage. She showed clips from different productions of Carmen to highlight the change from ‘presentational’ to ‘representational’ acting, and considered how acting is taught to young singers in conservatoires today.

Meanwhile, in the parallel session ‘Production and Creative Process’, we heard two more speakers. First up was Emma Higgins (NUI Maynooth), who spoke about the status of the mezzo-soprano in early Third Republic Paris. The truth seems to be that the ‘mezzo’ as a category did not exist in name at the Paris Opéra (although singers were expected to perform mezzo roles): the most prestigious female vocal categories were those of the soprano and contralto. Next, Simone Spagnolo (Trinity Laban) discussed Italian experimental opera in the second half of the twentieth century, using Berio’s Opera and Bussotti’s Passion Selon Sade as examples of alternative narrative forms which can mean many things (or nothing at all) according to the multiple interpretations of the audience. Spagnolo also discussed his own opera It Makes No Difference in the context of the ‘open work’. This paper, overall, demonstrated that the creation of an open work requires ingenious planning, and it was fascinating to see the difference intellectual processes which are necessary for creating a ‘convincing’ open work.

After a short break, delegates came together for a three-paper session entitled ‘The Business of Opera’. Alessandra Palidda (Cardiff University) got things started with a highly amusing paper on La Scala in Napoleonic Milan. Just one of the republican-flavoured works that was performed during this period was the ballet Il general Colli in Roma which featured a dancing Pope on stage and became known as ‘the Pope’s ballet’. Next, Matthew Elliot (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) brought the finances of French Grand Opera alive, with a look at the finances and funding of the Paris Opéra. The amounts of money it took to keep the art form alive were staggering, and losses were abundant; not helped by the bizarre condition that stage sets could not be re-used for subsequent productions. The last speaker in this session was Annabelle Lee (RHUL), who offered a fascinating insight into the Metropolitan Opera’s social media strategy. Lee ultimately concluded that we should be rather wary of claims that social media strategy is able to bring new audiences to the opera house. Some of her figures were surprising; for example, audiences over 55 are more likely to experience opera via digital media.

Following lunch was another session of three papers, entitled ‘Cross-cultural reception’. The first speaker was Corrina Connor (Oxford Brookes), who gave a colourful account of the 1876 arrival of Die Fledermaus in London. Particularly interesting was the way in which social and political events had an impact on the reception of this opera, and its subsequent revival in 1895. Next, Zara Barlas (Heidelberg University) gave a fascinating account of Edward Soloman’s operetta The Nautch Girl. This opera reflected colonial anxieties about Indian dancers, who were erroneously seen as prostitutes. Barlas demonstrated how this opera might be viewed through a colonial lens, offering new perspective on transculturality during this period. The final speaker in this session, Catherine Hutchinson (Goldsmiths), spoke of the lavish 1860 production of Sémiramis at the Paris Opéra. Particularly fascinating was Hutchinson’s description of how recent archaeological finds from Assyria, displayed at the Louvre during this period, were reflected in the sets of the production.

After another short break, delegates split for two more parallel sessions. One of these was entitled ‘Psychology and Listening.’ First up, David John Baker (Goldsmiths) shared the fascinating research he is undertaking as part of the ‘Transforming Musicology’ project. Baker has been working with many listeners, testing which factors affect their recognition of Wagner’s Leitmotifs. This study has so far yielded some surprising results, and Baker’s paper offered some intriguing insights into how the brain processes music. The last speaker in this session was Sebastian Bolz (LMU Munich), who offered an examination of the operatic chorus in Germany around 1900. This understudied area, Bolz argued, can offer a new perspective as a medium for group dynamics.

The final parallel session was entitled ‘British Literary Adaptations’. The first speaker, Russell Burdekin (Oxford Brookes), illustrated the lurid origins of Loder’s opera Raymond and Agnes, which was derived from the sensational Gothic romance The Monk (c. 1795) by Matthew Gregory Lewis. Burdekin explained that as theatre productions were subject to censorship in the early nineteenth century, it was necessary for stage adaptations of The Monk to tone some of the most scandalous aspects of this book which also had a plot too convoluted to be easily enacted on stage. Michael Tippett’s The Knot Garden was also derived from an earlier literary source, in this case Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Michael Graham’s (RHUL) paper focussed less on Tippett’s adaptation of the story than it did on the significance of ‘Der liebe Farbe’ – a song from Schubert’s cycle Die schöne Müllerin –which two of the opera’s characters (Flora and Dov) sing in Act II. Graham discussed the significance of the song for the ideas of gender mutability which pervade The Knot Garden.

The conference finished with a brilliant keynote from OBERTO’s Dr. Alexandra Wilson who offered much practical career advice for opera studies students, as well as sharing her own experiences and top tips. Alex began her talk by saying how pleased she was to see so many diverse and imaginative approaches being taken to opera studies and by noting that ‘The field is clearly in good health!’ Students found it especially useful to be able to ask questions and discuss topical issues such as public engagement and the REF. Please see Dr Wilson’s seperate blog post about this talk, where she shares her ‘top tips’. Delegates then held a short discussion about the future of the Opera Students’ Network, and many suggestions were made including regular social events, a new blog and website, and collaboration with singers and opera houses. We will be meeting shortly to discuss how to take some of these ideas forward – watch this space!

After the conference everyone headed to a local pub, where mutual areas of interest were discussed and new friendships were forged. It was extremely valuable to bring opera research students from around Europe together to discuss their research, as people working in disparate areas were able to come together share their work and ideas in a fun and dynamic environment. We eagerly look forward to next year’s conference!

In February, a group of OBERTO staff, undergraduates, MA students and PhD students attended English National Opera’s new production of Rigoletto, directed by Christopher Alden, at the London Coliseum. Below three students respond to the production.

Corrina Connor

‘With many details of James Hepokoski’s chapter ‘Staging Verdi’s Opera: the Single “Correct” Performance’ from Alison Latham and Roger Parker’s Verdi in Performance fresh in my mind from the morning’s MA seminar, I was eager to see and hear the extent to which Christopher Alden would deal with the four elements of dramma which Verdi had wished to have ‘interact with exquisite balance: text, music, vocal display, and stage picture’.  In fact, I made a conscious effort to think about how these elements worked together throughout this performance of Rigoletto. Although my ability to do this was inconsistent, so was the interaction of elements. While the stage picture was almost always pleasing, it was also confusing: having one basic set made it difficult to discern which location we were in – the Duke’s court accommodation, Rigoletto’s own home, or the inn where Sparafucile is going to kill the Duke – and the contrast between these locations seems important, especially as Gilda’s apparent complete separation from Rigoletto’s life at court is fundamental to the story.

Some aspects of Alden’s production affected me especially, and even after seeing three more productions (on DVD) since, these particular strengths remain significant. The appearance of the tableau which opened Act I brought to life the colours, light, and aspects of composition of two paintings I saw recently: Jean Béraud’s La Salle de rédaction du Journal des débats (1889), and Henri Fantin-Latour’s Hommage à Delacroix (1864).  Both of these paintings depict closed, all-male groups in a way that is unique to the nineteenth century.  While both these pictures are representative of completely different social situations to that of the Duke of Mantua’s court in Rigoletto, the staging at the beginning of Act I was powerfully evocative of the nineteenth-century milieux of these paintings.  In this context the manner in which the women of Rigoletto deported themselves, and their interaction with the men, was reminiscent of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), although in this particularly production of Rigoletto, remarkably, nobody on stage was ever quite naked. Here, the mise-en-scène was ingeniously suggestive of social situations in which the veneer of propriety is very, very thin, reminding us that particular forms of hypocrisy which now we may associate with the nineteenth century may not be so foreign after all. Happily, these qualities of the production compensated for the blinding chaos at the end of Act II, and the inconsistencies at the end of Act III: Rigoletto and Sparafucile’s discussion of how and where to dump the body in the river lost a lot of its significance, and the moment of horror and despair when Rigoletto hears that the Duke is not dead was diluted by the unambiguous presence of the Duke, sauntering across the stage. These objections aside, this production of Rigoletto was an engaging and disturbing approach to an opera whose themes have a contemporary resonance’.

David Marks

‘The set was innovative and for the most part it worked with clever use of lighting but I thought that at the end in the final scene in which Gilda dies, the set lacked the intimacy that I have seen in other productions and which is important to the emotions being conveyed. Also when Sparafucile murders Gilda at the Inn, it was difficult to imagine an important change in location given that the set was the same’.

Anna Barry

‘The sets were visually very impressive, evoking the atmosphere of a nineteenth-century gentleman’s club very effectively. The way that space and time were depicted within this set, however, did get a little confusing at times. Most impressive was the far simpler staging of the final scene, with Gilda lying on a plain white sheet in the centre of the stage. I found the contrast to the scale and detail of the previous sets very effective, and this made for a moving and powerful final scene’.

Did you know that both the Royal Opera House and English National Opera offer brilliant benefits for students, with many cheap tickets available?

The Royal Opera House runs a fantastic Student scheme – free for all students to sign up to online. Once they are registered students get an advanced booking period, making it easier for them to purchase cheaper seats before they go on general public sale. In addition, 20 of the cheapest seats for every performance are now reserved for students only – these can cost as little as just £4! There are also several dedicated student performances every season, and students are offered discounts at the bar and on programmes. In addition, the ‘Student Standby’ scheme offers unsold tickets to performances for just £10. Student booking for the Spring season opened at 10 am this morning – sign up quickly to get tickets for some fantastic productions!

English National Opera has a scheme called Access All Arias for students and those aged under 30. Under this scheme, students are able to buy heavily discounted tickets for every performance – these cost as little as £10 each. Programmes are also half price and cheap, last-minute tickets are often made available.

On 26 October, a group of OBERTO staff and students attended the ‘Wandering Minstrels: Travelling Opera in Britain’ study day at the Royal Academy of Music. Here are some of their responses to the day.

MA student Pauline Galea writes:

I particularly enjoyed Dr Paul Rodmell’s session on ‘Unsung Heroes, 1875-1919’.  His overview of the range of touring opera companies in England during that period, their repertoire and their performing schedule, painted a very vivid picture of the importance of the touring system.  It was interesting to note that opera companies then, as now, needed to maintain a balance of producing ‘old favourites’ to bring in the revenue, but also regularly commissioned new works, and also that the principal language for touring companies was English, with the attendant requirement to arrange translations.

MA student Anna Koukoullis writes:

I was most drawn to comments made by Dr John Ward, who presented a paper on the history of the Carl Rosa company. This was particularly interesting as it discussed Rosa’s thoughts not only on repertoire, but production issues. Dr Ward was able to show us a primary source that contained a sketch of the vision Rosa had for the staging of a particular project. Touring opera companies often find their ambitions for the staging of a work limited by being on the move, and performing in a variety of venues of differing size. This inspired me to ask the question, how does touring limit what companies can do visually and dramatically on stage? And do these limitations affect how they bring opera to the masses?

Carl Rosa

PhD student Anna Maria Barry writes:

The most interesting session for me was ‘English Touring Opera and the Impact of Cinema Broadcasts’. This paper concerned a research project that is currently underway examining the fast-growing trend for operatic cinema broadcasts and the impact this may be having on the audiences for live opera. English Touring Opera traditionally serves audiences in towns and rural communities where live opera is not available. Now, however, the majority of these communities are able to access world-class cinema broadcasts from the Met and the Royal Opera House. The research project is surveying audiences in order to learn more about the perceived advantages and disadvantages of opera in the cinema. It is hoped that the results will allow English Touring Opera to adapt to a changing marketplace for opera. Although the project is still ongoing, initial audience responses raise some interesting and surprising questions about the nature of live performance.

Alexandra Wilson writes:

A highlight of the day was Professor Katherine Preston’s keynote paper about the tours made by British opera troupes to the US during the long nineteenth century. I have written about a concert tour that the Italian-American soprano Amelita Galli-Curci made to the UK during the 1920s, so it was interesting to learn how the process worked in reverse. Professor Preston gave a vivid account of the challenges that opera singers faced on the road, the alternating fads for Italian and English opera in nineteenth-century America, and the surprisingly important role that was played by women in setting up and managing operatic troupes.

Applicants to the MA in Music at Oxford Brookes University have the opportunity to apply for various Brookes bursaries to support their studies. The closing date for these awards is Friday 28 June 2013.

For further details visit http://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying-at-brookes/finance/postgraduate-finance—uk-and-eu-students/sources-of-funding-for-postgraduate-uk-and-eu-students/ and follow the links to the John Henry Brookes, Faculty Taught Masters Scholarships and Santander awards.

Applicants must have a place on the course before applying for the funding. If you are interested in applying to the course and being considered for funding, please contact Alexandra Wilson at the first opportunity.