[AMS-announce] CONF: Ancient Drama in Modern Opera, 1600-1800, Oxford, July 2007

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Ancient Drama in Modern Opera, 1600-1800 
A one-day APGRD conference, Thursday 12 July 2007

Classics Centre, University of Oxford 

The importance of Greek drama for the evolution of European opera is well known but tends not to be distinguished from the influence of Greek mythology more generally. In keeping the focus of this conference on the influence of ancient drama in the first 150 years or so of opera's development we hope to shed new light both on that development and on the reception of Greek drama. The speakers are drawn from the worlds of Classics, Modern Languages, and Music, and they include people involved in the performance of operatic works as well as some of the leading academics in this field. The provisional speakers and paper titles for this conference are as follows:

Dr Michael Burden (Director of Productions, New Chamber Opera),
'Myth in Metastasio's works'

Bruno Forment (composer and performer; PhD student at University of Ghent),
'The gods out of the machine ... and their come-back'

Professor Wendy Heller (Department of Music, Princeton University),
'Playing with fortune: the fate of Pyrrhus in seicento Venice'

Professor Robert Ketterer (Department of Classics, University of Iowa),
'The influence of Agostino Piovene's translations of Greek tragedy on his opera libretti in the first quarter of the 18th century'

Dr Suzana Ograjenšek (Research Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge),
'Andromache in late 17th and early 18th century operas'

Professor Ellen Rosand (Department of Music, Yale University),
'Classical themes in Monteverdi'

Professor Reinhard Strohm (Faculty of Music, Oxford University),
' "Addio Tebani!" Oedipus Tyrannus as opera seria (1729)'

Jennifer Thorp (Archivist, New College, Oxford),
'Dance in Lully's Alceste'

Dr Amy Wygant (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Glasgow University),
'The Ghost of Alcestis'

After the papers there will be a wine reception and a short recital of arias from eighteenth-century tragic operas by Ensemble La Falsirena (Suzana Ograjensek, soprano; Luke Green, harpsichord; Henrik Persson, baroque 'cello).

 www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk