Opera Symposium Explores Representations of Race

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 2, 2016) — An upcoming symposium presented by the University of Kentucky Opera Research Alliance aims to explore African-American representations in opera. "Confronting America’s Racial Past through Opera" will be held 3:30–5:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, in the Niles Gallery of the Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center on the UK campus. The symposium is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by the UK School of Music and the UK Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, the symposium will feature presentations by graduate students in musicology, ethnomusicology and vocal performance. The doctoral student speakers and their topics are:

· musicology student Kaylina Madison, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Louis Gruenberg’s "The Emperor Jones," an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s 1920 play of the same title, at 3:30 p.m.;

· ethnomusicology student Nathaniel Lucy, of Fayette, Arkansas, on "Many Thousand Gone," an opera that portrays the tragedy of a real-life Missouri lynching, at 4 p.m.;

· vocal performance student Iris Fordjour-Hankins, of Detroit, Michigan, on the story of Kentucky slave Margaret Garner in Richard Danielpour’s opera "Margaret Garner," set to a libretto by Toni Morrison, author of "Beloved," at 4:30 p.m.; and

· musicology student Kathryn Caton, of Fargo, North Dakota on the silent presence of Martin Luther King Jr. and representation of passive resistance in Philip Glass’s opera, "Satyagraha," at 5 p.m.

The following week, bruce d. mcclung, associate professor of musicology and division head of composition, musicology and theory at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, will present "From the Lower East Side to Catfish Row: 'Strawberries!' as Cultural Mediation in 'Porgy and Bess' Street Scene," which will begin 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12. This talk is also free and open to the public.

McClung is a musicologist whose interests include American music, musical theater, mass entertainment, manuscript studies and critical editing. His research appears in Theater, The Kurt Weill Newsletter, "Reader’s Guide to Music: History, Theory, and Criticism," Pipers Enzklopädie des Musiktheaters: Oper, Operette, Musical, Ballet and The Grove Dictionary of American Music (2d ed.); the collections "A Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill Studien" and the "Cambridge Companion to the Musical"; and the New York Public Library’s iPad app "Biblion: The Boundless Library."

The author of the award-winning book "Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical" (Oxford University Press), mcclung is also editor of the two-volume critical edition of "Lady in the Dark" for the Kurt Weill Edition, and served as the musical and text consultant for the Royal National Theatre’s production of that musical play. He has received an American Musicological Society Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Award. He is currently writing a monograph titled "The World of Tomorrow: Music and the New York World’s Fair 1939/40."

For more information about the symposium or mcclung's lecture, contact Diana Hallman, associate professor of musicology and coordinator of the UK Opera Research Alliance, by email to diana.hallman@uky.edu.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu