Henson, Karen

About Me

Position/Title:

Assistant Professor

Karen Henson arrived at Columbia in Fall 2004. She trained at Oxford and in Paris, and has 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, including Verdi. She also specializes in nineteenth-century French music; women-and-men-and music; dance; and music-theatrical performance. She is currently working on two books, a study of fin-de-siecle operatic performance, "Physiognomies of Opera," and an edited volume on singers and technology, "Technologies of the Diva."

Academic Background

Degrees:

BA, Oxford, 1994

MSt, Oxford, 1995

DPhil, Oxford, 2000

Selected Publications:

Editor, "The Divo and The Danseur," a special journal issue on the nineteenth-century male music-theatrical performer (including introduction, "Divo Worship," and article "Verdi, Victor Maurel, and Fin-de-SiÃ¨cle Operatic Performance"), under review

"Victor Maurel et le spectaculaire verdien," in Le Spectaculaire dans les arts de la scene du romantisme a la Belle Epoque, ed. Isabelle Moindrot (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, in press)

"Augusta Holmes," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), Vol. 11, 641-2

"Exotisme et nationalites: Aida a l'Opera de Paris," in L'Opera en France et en Italie (1791-1925): Une Scene privilegee d'echanges litteraires et musicaux, ed. Herve Lacombe (Paris: Societe franacaise de musicologie, 2000), 263-97

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

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

Contact Information

Office:

816B Dodge Hall

Columbia e-mail:

kh2174@columbiae.du [1]

Telephone Number:

212-854-8636

Mailing Address:

MC 1834
Department of Music
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027