Operatic Misfittings, or Misfitting Opera

A talk by Dr. Colleen Renihan (PhD) in the Fine Arts Research Lecture Series (FARLS) hosted by the University of Saskatchewan Department of Music.

Date: Wednesday, March 10
Time: 12:30 pm (Sask. time)
Location: Online via Zoom

Free and open to the public

Watch online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89579339284?pwd=ZzNrMjVHOURvOUk5aE5oNHhZZ05RUT09

Meeting ID: 895 7933 9284

Passcode: 908281

About the lecture

In this talk, I engage with recent work in disability studies and musicology to investigate initiatives that mobilize operatic performances and processes in order to engage with and benefit individuals experiencing homelessness. Borrowing Rosemary Garland Thomson’s term “misfitting” (2011), I ask: in what ways does opera contribute to misfitting? Why is opera so prone to misfittings, and why does it misfit so boldly? What might be revealed by examining the misfitting process, and by unearthing opera's incongruent relationships and fits? I interrogate two contemporary operatic initiatives that engage with homeless populations in London, England, and Montreal, Canada. Through observations and interviews with both participants and administrators, I consider the kind of utopian gesture that is animated in these initiatives, and the challenges they offer to traditional modes of operatic spectatorship and scholarship.

Dr. Colleen Renihan (PhD) is assistant professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Music Theatre and Opera at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. She holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Toronto, as well as an artist diploma in opera performance from the Vancouver Academy of Music. Colleen has published chapters in several edited collections on opera, and in the journals twentieth century music, The Journal of the Society for American Music, University of Toronto Quarterly, and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. Her book, The Operatic Archive: American Opera as History, has just been published as the newest volume in Ashgate’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series. She is currently at work on a second book on new music theatre in Canada.

Upcoming Events