Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory

This review essay considers the relationships among opera, sound recording, and critical race theory, and explores them at a moment when these fields are beginning to converge. One of my concerns will be the recent and ground-breaking studies and collections on opera and race by Naomi Adele André (...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal:	Matthew Timmermans
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Columbia University Libraries 2021
Materias:	Music and books on Music M
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d1da9d9e780d42b49d08258cb9e26db8
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:d1da9d9e780d42b49d08258cb9e26db8
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d1da9d9e780d42b49d08258cb9e26db82021-11-06T18:55:42ZOpera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory10.52214/cm.v108i.88110011-3735https://doaj.org/article/d1da9d9e780d42b49d08258cb9e26db82021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/currentmusicology/article/view/8811https://doaj.org/toc/0011-3735 This review essay considers the relationships among opera, sound recording, and critical race theory, and explores them at a moment when these fields are beginning to converge. One of my concerns will be the recent and ground-breaking studies and collections on opera and race by Naomi Adele André (2017, 2019), Kira Thurman (2012, 2019), Pamela Karantonis and Dylan Robinson (2011), and Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley (2016). Another will be the neglected history of opera and sound recording; notable scholars here include Karen Henson (2020), Robert Cannon (2014), and Richard Leppert (2015). Finally, I will focus on the thought-provoking analyses of race and sound by Alexander Weheliye (2005), Brian Ward (2003), Jennifer Lynn Stoever (2016) and Nina Sun Eidsheim (2019). There are obvious connections among these three bodies of scholarship, yet these connections have not yet been clearly identified and explored. Although many scholars have come to embrace opera as a material and embodied phenomenon, the artform’s dissemination, analysis, and enjoyment through sound recording is still overlooked as a site of enquiry, especially its potential as a fertile site of inquiry about identity. To overlook the issue of identity in relation to recording is to perpetuate the belief that recordings are primarily documents of performance practice. It ignores the army of technicians who invisibly craft the acoustic object, many of whom are historically white and male. This review essay seeks to address this neglect and to suggest some ways in which the processes of making and consuming opera recordings is intimately related to whiteness and anti-Blackness—but also to Black possibility. In what follows, I cast a broad net, ranging widely and at times unexpectedly. I begin with some recent events in American musicology and in the New York operatic scene; then, turn to a consideration of some of the scholarship just mentioned; and finally conclude with a brief discussion of a specific recording, the Metropolitan Opera’s “live” sound recording of the 2019 production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Matthew TimmermansColumbia University LibrariesarticleMusic and books on MusicMENCurrent Musicology, Vol 108 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Music and books on Music M
spellingShingle	Music and books on Music M Matthew Timmermans Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
description	This review essay considers the relationships among opera, sound recording, and critical race theory, and explores them at a moment when these fields are beginning to converge. One of my concerns will be the recent and ground-breaking studies and collections on opera and race by Naomi Adele André (2017, 2019), Kira Thurman (2012, 2019), Pamela Karantonis and Dylan Robinson (2011), and Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley (2016). Another will be the neglected history of opera and sound recording; notable scholars here include Karen Henson (2020), Robert Cannon (2014), and Richard Leppert (2015). Finally, I will focus on the thought-provoking analyses of race and sound by Alexander Weheliye (2005), Brian Ward (2003), Jennifer Lynn Stoever (2016) and Nina Sun Eidsheim (2019). There are obvious connections among these three bodies of scholarship, yet these connections have not yet been clearly identified and explored. Although many scholars have come to embrace opera as a material and embodied phenomenon, the artform’s dissemination, analysis, and enjoyment through sound recording is still overlooked as a site of enquiry, especially its potential as a fertile site of inquiry about identity. To overlook the issue of identity in relation to recording is to perpetuate the belief that recordings are primarily documents of performance practice. It ignores the army of technicians who invisibly craft the acoustic object, many of whom are historically white and male. This review essay seeks to address this neglect and to suggest some ways in which the processes of making and consuming opera recordings is intimately related to whiteness and anti-Blackness—but also to Black possibility. In what follows, I cast a broad net, ranging widely and at times unexpectedly. I begin with some recent events in American musicology and in the New York operatic scene; then, turn to a consideration of some of the scholarship just mentioned; and finally conclude with a brief discussion of a specific recording, the Metropolitan Opera’s “live” sound recording of the 2019 production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
format	article
author	Matthew Timmermans
author_facet	Matthew Timmermans
author_sort	Matthew Timmermans
title	Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
title_short	Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
title_full	Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
title_fullStr	Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
title_full_unstemmed	Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory
title_sort	opera, sound recording, and critical race theory
publisher	Columbia University Libraries
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/d1da9d9e780d42b49d08258cb9e26db8
work_keys_str_mv	AT matthewtimmermans operasoundrecordingandcriticalracetheory
_version_	1718443698702778368

Opera, Sound Recording, and Critical Race Theory

Ejemplares similares