Global Mediterranean. Postcolonial music histories (16th-20th centuries). IMS Intercongressional Symposium

Session

Opera: (Post)colonial reception

FP6

9 Jul 2025, 12:30

Aula 7

Conveners

Opera: (Post)colonial reception

• David Irving (ICREA & IMF, CSIC)

164. Opera in Colonial Vietnam: Symbol of Power and Authority?

09/07/2025, 12:30

Free paper

Material expressions of power function as fundamental instruments of empire, creating controlled environments that encompass both colonizers and colonized. It is therefore unsurprising that the French administration in Indochina, between the 19th and 20th centuries, undertook expensive construction projects to solidify their authority over Southeast Asia, including the establishment of...

87. The Italian Opera Business in South America: A Study in Migration, Colonialism, and Transculturation in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (remote)

09/07/2025, 12:50

Free paper

In her Music in Imperial Rio de Janeiro, Cristina Magaldi describes Italian opera as an “enduring force in European colonialism.” During the nineteenth century, European companies populated opera theaters in Latin America, bringing with them the belief that opera had the power of elevating or modernizing its audiences–a particularly important feature to local elites trying to escape...

178. Transoceanic Orpheus: aesthetic-musical experimentalism from opera to Brazilian carnival (remote)

09/07/2025, 13:10

Free paper

In 1956, the play Orfeu da Conceição, by poet and composer Vinícius de Moraes, premiered in Rio de Janeiro, featuring music by Tom Jobim and modernist sets by Oscar Niemeyer, performed by the Teatro Experimental do Negro company. The text, transposed the mythical episode of Orpheus and Eurydice to the Rio carnival and was later adapted into film Black Orpheus (1959), directed by Marcel Camus....