"Singing Nuns, Libertine Parody, and the Aesthetics of French Revolutionary Opera".
Speaker: Callum John Blackmore, Music Department
The French Revolution launched a trend for operas, plays, and parodies involving Revolutionary forces rescuing young women from corrupt or tyrannical nuns and monks. It has been widely assumed that these operas capitalized on the anti-clerical sentiments which emerged as a key political force during the Revolution. Blackmore seeks to challenge this assumption: he argues that these works emerged as sites of aesthetic and political circumspection, demonstrating that the connections between operatic representation and Revolutionary legislation were not always straightforward.
Graduate Scholar Talks provide Ph.D. candidates preparing to defend their dissertations an opportunity to make a generalist presentation on their research to a cross-disciplinary audience ready to listen carefully and ask good questions. EPIC members help give the Ph.D. students a useful learning experience and at the same time learn about something that may be well beyond their own scholarly interests.