CFP: Staging Operatic Anniversaries, Oxford Brookes Univ., Oxford, 10 Sep 2013

Conference Title: “Staging Operatic Anniversaries”
CFP deadline: 26 April 2013
Conference date: 10 September 2013
Conference web site URL: http://arts.brookes.ac.uk/research/oberto/staging-operatic-anniversaries.html
Conference venue: Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

A one-day conference organised by the OBERTO opera research unit (Oxford Brookes: Exploring Research Trends in Opera).

2013 is a year of important operatic anniversaries, marking, amongst others, the bicentenaries of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the 150th anniversary of Pietro Mascagni and the centenary of Benjamin Britten. While conferences and performances are being organised worldwide to celebrate the music of these composers, we wish to consider the historiographical question of how operatic anniversaries are themselves commemorated.

‘Staging Operatic Anniversaries’ will address how composers, operas and operatic institutions are memorialised in anniversary years and the different ways in which such commemorations can be considered to be performative: an act of ‘staging’. Simultaneously, the conference will explore how historical anniversaries have been depicted or celebrated upon the operatic stage. It will also consider issues surrounding the staging of operas by composers whose anniversaries fall in 2013.

We intend that the conference should bring together in debate musicologists, historians, scholars of biography, those involved in organising anniversary celebrations and other interested parties. We therefore invite papers addressing as wide a variety of topics and methodologies as possible, including (but not limited to):

The ways in which the anniversaries of operatic composers and of significant operatic premieres have been marked, both historically and in the present

Celebrations to mark the anniversaries of opera houses, opera festivals and other operatic institutions

The ways in which anniversaries of significant historical events or birthdays have been depicted upon the operatic stage

Historiographical approaches to musical memorialisation

The staging of works by composers whose anniversaries fall in 2013

Proposals of up to 250 words are invited for individual papers of 20 minutes duration. Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Dr Alexandra Wilson (alexandra.wilson at brookes.ac.uk) no later than 26 April 2013.