Upcoming

Coming out of Columbia and Barnard’s histories as an incubator for new opera, Operatic Feminisms: On and Offstage, considers the multifaceted involvement of women, trans* and non-binary people in the creation, performance, and analysis of opera. This event invites participants to consider the future of opera as a site of feminist academic study and as a performing art, with questions of how to make the opera world a more equitable place for performers, composers, and audiences. This day-long symposium will comprise a series of public panel talks and workshops, held in person on Columbia’s. An evening roundtable consisting of composers, performers, producers, and directors, will bring audiences into the world of new opera, highlighting the work of and challenges faced by women, trans* and non-binary people in the field, discussing the possibilities for new opera as political and community engagement, as well as the exciting work taking place right now in opera companies operating and commissioning works by women. Panel talks will invite scholarly work and talks singers, composers, and patrons from the past and present who have been sidelined or excluded from the canon, with special calls for work addressing race and queer identities in opera. In keeping with the public-facing nature of the event, panelists will be asked to address their talk to a general audience as much as possible. An open rehearsal with composer Tanner Porter would give audiences a peak into the creative process for premiering a new operatic work, with a chance to ask questions to both composer and performers. The event will culminate in the world premiere of three new works commissioned for the occasion: The Boughs, a one-act opera for women’s voices written especially for Barnard-Columbia’s New Opera Workshop by Tanner Porter, and two recently commissioned pieces from Columbia undergraduate composers Nicole Balsirow and Sophia Ouyang. We envision Operatic Feminisms as space for rediscovering buried histories and looking forward to new horizons in opera, helping to re-establish Columbia as a site for new opera performance and as a hub for performers, composers, scholars, and critics to come together, exploring the possibilities of public music scholarship in collaboration with performance, and establishing fruitful connections with each other and with the New York City community.

The graduate students at Columbia University invite proposals for their upcoming Columbia Music Scholarship Conference, Operatic Feminisms: On and Off the Opera Stage to be held in-person in New York City on March 25, 2023.

This day-long symposium bridges the worlds of scholarship, performance, and criticism to think through the possibilities for feminist opera studies and the work of women, including theBIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, across all elements of opera production, both  both on and offstage. Public panels, workshops, and roundtables will feature scholarly work and discussions with professionals in NYC’s opera scene, including composers, producers, directors, critics, and opera singers coming together with scholars. Throughout the event, performances of operatic works by women both historical and living will introduce these pieces to audiences, culminating in the world premiere of three new operatic works by Tanner Porter, Nicole Balsirow, and Sofia Ouyang. 

The committee invites submissions for: 

- Individual papers (either of scholarly or public nature) of 20 minutes in duration (followed by questions and discussion) 

- Lecture-recitals of 20 minutes in duration (followed by questions and discussion)

Possible themes may consider (but are not limited to):

- Women, Opera, and the Archives

- Rethinking “Opera,” Rethinking Performance

- Opera Beyond the Composer: Production, Performance, and Patronage

- Feminist Opera Scholarship: Past, Present, and Future

- Opera in New York City and Beyond

- Intersectional Opera: Race and Class On and Off-stage

- Opera and/as Pedagogy

- Trans Opera: Rethinking Voice and Gender

We welcome work from all areas related to opera, including but not limited to music studies. The conference is open to all participants both from within and outside academia. We encourage submissions from graduate students and early-career researchers.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit a 250-word anonymized abstract describing your talk or performance to operaticfeminismscolumbia [at] gmail.com

 Submissions are due on January 20th, 2023. Please use the email above with any questions.