8 June 2026, 9:00 PDT, 12:00 EST; 18:00 CET
This is a time of fracture. Conflict, economic precarity, political instability, and environmental breakdown are driving people apart. Around the globe, fear and instincts of self-preservation have prompted nations to retreat into isolationist projects. As a result, the world has become, yet again, a place of hard borders. What does this mean for opera, an art form that relies on mobility, integration, and exchange?
In this panel discussion, the Black Opera Research Network invites scholars and practitioners to reflect on opera’s relationship with borders. Opera singer and director Joseph Oparamanuike, composer Hector Armienta, and music director Pablo Duque will join Dr Hilde Roos to discuss the ways in which opera may both destabilise and reinforce inherited distinctions between race, nation, class, and genre. Possible talking points may include, but won’t be limited to:
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- The impact of hardened borders on opera practitioners’ work
- Opera as a vehicle for cultural and racial reconciliation
- Performance beyond the borders of the opera house
- Opera’s role in identifying and preserving nationalist cultural narratives
- Intermediality and experimentation as metaphors for border-crossing