Speakers
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Allison Smith (US)
Allison R. Smith received her PhD from Boston University in Historical Musicology in 2023. Her dissertation, “Sounding Futures: Black Operatic Voice in Postapartheid South Africa,” focuses on the participation and education of Black South Africans in opera and the processes of some of the opera industry’s institutions. Her work aims to put Black vocal pedagogies, Black quotidian experiences, and institutional processes in conversation with South Africa’s colonial and apartheid pasts. She received funding from the American Musicological Society, Boston University, and the federal government to conduct archival research and fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa. Allison has published this research in The Opera Journal and has presented this research both domestically and abroad. Allison is a founding member of the Black Opera Research Network and currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Black Opera and Music Theatre (JBOM).
Currently Allison works in civic engagement for Virginia Opera in Norfolk, Virginia.
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Ann Masina (South Africa)
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Antonio Cuyler (US)
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Aria Umezawa (US)
Opera Post 2020
2020 was a watershed year for opera worldwide. The Covid-19 pandemic and the concomitant reevaluation of familiar economic and social institutions compelled opera creators and organizations to think creatively about new routes to access, representation, and resilience. Five years later, the world has changed almost unrecognizably. With the rise of political sectarianism globally, it is not unreasonable to think that the 2020 moment is over. Reversals of diversity initiatives and a global turn towards isolationist cultural politics are threatening to erode the hard-won changes of the past half-decade. This panel convenes an international group of scholars and opera makers to ask where opera finds itself today, five years after it set off in a hopeful new direction. Specifically, the participants reflect on opera institutions’ initial responses to the 2020 moment, and on how the promises and changes implemented at the time have aged. They examine current challenges facing those working in opera, and think about methods of creating art, scholarship, and community in an increasingly fractured and unpredictable present.
Discussion points may include but won’t be limited to:
- structural and artistic resilience amid political change
- impacts of cultural nationalism on artists, institutions, and creators of opera
- opera’s historical ties to nation-building projects
- afterlives of expressions of solidarity
- opera and digital communities
Panelists:
Dr Antonio Cuyler (University of Michigan)
Aria Umezawa (Stage director and co-founder, Amplified Opera)
Ann Masina (Singer, composer, theatre maker)
Moderator:
Dr Allison Smith (Public musicologist)