9 April (Orgelsalen, Olavskvartalet 11:00-13:00)
Workshop on Baroque ornamentation with
Ann Hallenberg and Holger Schmitt-Hallenberg.
Singing students from the Music Institute (NTNU) FREE

10 April (Festsalen, Katedralskole 19:00)
Che cosa son le donne...    Arias from Eighteenth-Century Venice. 
Recital by Ann Hallenberg & TSO Baroque ensemble

Programme

BUY TICKETS FOR THE CONCERT HERE

11-12 April (Dokkhuset 9:00-18:30)
13 April (Suhmhuset 9:00-13:00) 
International Conference  FREE

Conference programme         Abstracts and biographies

CLICK HERE to register for the conference

This conference is organized within the framework of the five-year research project “Women, Opera and the Public Stage in Eighteenth-Century Venice” (WoVen), funded by the Norwegian Research Council and based at the Music Institute, NTNU.

The conference brings together leading specialists in the fields of musicology, history and opera, theatre and literary studies, as well as junior scholars in these fields, to explore the role of women in European operatic culture in one of the most important centres of the Enlightenment: Venice—a hub for critical debate, an important proto-feminist centre and a prominent operatic centre of international significance.

The papers presented explore public and operatic life in the Serenissima, the network of women (Venetian and non) who, as singers, managers, patrons and audience members, participated in the operatic life of the city, and how opera-going contributed to women’s increased visibility in contemporary culture and society. The conference contextualizes these activities within historical knowledge of women’s rights and wider contemporary critical discourses about women’s education and place in society.

The conference features sessions dedicated to female singers, their careers, individual vocal qualities, and practice of ornamentation, as well as acting techniques, costumes, dramaturgy, dramatic roles, and different modes of representation of the feminine. It explores the practice of cross-gender casting and the interaction among stage role and public persona, questions of agency, and the mechanisms of celebrity’s creation in the eighteenth century. Women in authorial and leadership roles provide a lens through which to explore how such activities may have functioned as platforms for claiming a female authorial voice in the male-dominated space of theatre direction and libretto writing.

A round table at the end of the conference discusses the challenges and opportunities of staging eighteenth -century opera today. The impact on the audience of the ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ body on the stage invites discussion around the thorny issue of authenticity and the creative opportunities in costume design. It includes an interview with opera director and choreographer Deda Cristina Colonna and fashion designer Silvano Arnoldo.

While the conference’s focus is on operatic women in eighteenth-century Venice, discussions and reflections are encouraged to go further to assess the female role in the transnational literary and gender history of early modern Europe. By reconstructing careers, activities, and acting practices of female singers and their impact on opera production, and by shedding new light on how Italian opera was practiced and how it accompanied the life of women of the past, the papers presented here aim to enhance our understanding of Italian opera’s impact on the construction of gender roles and models over the long “century of women.”