Thomas Adès has drawn attention to the ‘mysterious thing that happens when you set actions to music: a third shape that emerges when something non-visual like a musical score is acted out by people moving on a stage’. This conference will explore Adès’s three operatic shapes of music, text, and performative realisation through the lenses of language and cultural memory.
The event will take place over two days. The first day will focus on analytical approaches to Adès’s operas, and will conclude with a round table on The Exterminating Angel prior to the UK premiere of the opera at the Royal Opera House that evening. The second day will focus on interdisciplinary approaches to Adès’s operas and their broader contexts.
Call for Papers
The conference organisers welcome paper proposals (20 minutes maximum, with 10 minutes for questions) for this event. The themes of the conference will include:
– the translingual negotiation between music, verbal, filmic and theatrical languages
– translations and reworkings of source materials for the operas
– place, space and cultural memory (including on stage, screen or in performance)
– time and temporality (music, text, staging)
Send proposals (including title, academic affiliation, 300-word abstract and technical requirements) to Edward Venn (e.j.venn@leeds.ac.uk) by 4pm (GMT) on Monday 16th January 2017.
Confirmed Speakers: Thomas Adès; Peter William Evans (Queen Mary University of London); and John Roeder (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)
Programme Committee: Paul Archbold (Kingston University), Catherine Davies (Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study), Christopher Dromey (Middlesex Univeristy), Philip Stoecker (Hofstra University), Edward Venn (University of Leeds)
Sponsors: AHRC Open World Research Initiative, Institute for Modern Languages Research, Music and Letters Trust, Society for Music Analysis
Cross-Language Dynamics – Reshaping Community: Translingual Strand