Biography

Name, Title, & Role(s)
Full Name:
Karen Henson
Position/Title:
Assistant Professor
Administrative Roles:
Colloquium Coordinator, 2009-10
Contact Information
Office Address:
816B Dodge Hall
Columbia e-mail:
kh2174@columbia.edu
Telephone Number(s):
(212) 854-8636
Mailing Address:
MC 1834, Department of Music, Columbia University, 621 Dodge Hall, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

Karen Henson joined the Columbia faculty in Fall 2004.  She trained at Oxford and in Paris and, before moving to New York City, held postdoctoral positions at Christ Church, Oxford, King's College, Cambridge, and the Stanford Humanities Center.  Her research focuses on nineteenth-century French and Italian opera.  She also specializes in nineteenth-century French music; women--and men--and music; dance; and operatic performance.  In Spring 2007 Professor Henson was co-organizer of the international, interdisciplinary conference "Technologies of the Diva" (www.italianacademy.columbia.edu/divas).  She is currently finishing a book on late nineteenth-century operatic performance, Physiognomies of Opera, and an edited volume on sopranos and technology, Technologies of the Diva.
 

Degrees, Publications, and Recordings
Degrees:
MA, DPhil (Oxon)
Selected Publications:

"Gilbert Duprez," "Victor Maurel," "Giuseppina Pasqua," and other Verdian singers for The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia, ed. Roberta Marvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

"La Dernière Pensée musicale de Meyerbeer," in Aspects de l'opera français de Meyerbeer à Honegger, ed. Jean-Christophe Branger and Vincent Giroud (Lyons: Editions Symétrie, 2009), 11-28

"Verdi versus Victor Maurel on Falstaff: Twelve New Verdi Letters and Other Operatic and Musical Theater Sources," 19th-Century Music, 31 (2007), 113-30

Guest Editor, "The Divo and the Danseur," special issue on the nineteenth-century male opera and ballet performer, Cambridge Opera Journal, 19 (2007): includes Karen Henson, "Introduction: Divo Worship;" Gregory W. Bloch, "The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez;" Marian Smith, "The Disappearing Danseur;" Henson, "Verdi, Victor Maurel and Fin-de-Siècle Operatic Performance;" and Thomas W. Laqueur, "Response: Men with a Past"

"Victor Maurel et le spectaculaire verdien," in Le Spectaculaire dans les arts de la scène du Romantisme à la Belle Epoque, ed. Isabelle Moindrot (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 2006), 239-44

"Exotisme et nationalités: Aida à l'Opéra de Paris," in L'Opéra en France et en Italie (1791-1925): Une Scène privilégiée d'échanges littéraires et musicaux, ed. Hervé Lacombe (Paris: Société française de musicologie, 2000), 263-97

"Augusta Holmès" and other late nineteenth-century French entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), www.oxfordmusiconline.com

"Victor Capoul, Marguerite Olagnier's Le Saïs, and the Arousing of Female Desire," Journal of the American Musicological Society, 52 (1999), 419-63

"In the House of Disillusion: Augusta Holmès and La Montagne noire," Cambridge Opera Journal, 9 (1997), 233-62

Submitted by khenson on February 15, 2007 - 5:38pm. tags: