mardi 11 septembre 2018 —— La rédaction.

Self-Borrowing in Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera: A Reconsideration

30 November 2018, Maynooth (Irlande)
Department of Music, Logic House, Maynooth University
Submission deadline: 21 September 2018
International Symposium
Conference Website

Inquiries: Candida.Mantica -at- mu.ie.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Emanuele Senici (Università di Roma La Sapienza)

Confirmed Invited Speakers: Prof. Francesco Izzo (University of Southampton); Prof. Giorgio Sanguinetti (Università di Roma Tor Vergata)

Defined as the re-use of pre-existing music in a new work by the same author, self-borrowing has received significant attention from scholars of nineteenth-century Italian opera. Whereas in the past emphasis fell mostly on close readings of individual operas, recent research has addressed this practice from a wider perspective, showing how a thorough examination of self-borrowings can provide insight into composers’ creative processes, style, and the relation between words, music, and drama. The border between self-borrowing and originality has also been questioned, and the study of self-borrowing has reinforced the point that musical detail in this repertory is worthy of analytical investigation. Still, the broader contextual and conceptual implications of self-borrowing remain largely unexplored. The aim of this symposium is to consider the practice of self-borrowing not only as a compositional phenomenon, but also as an indicator of historical and socio-cultural transformations in the industry of nineteenth-century Italian opera.

The conference committee welcomes proposals exploring any aspect of self-borrowing. We particularly encourage contributions taking this practice as a vantage point from which to explore redefinitions of the mechanisms of production and circulation of nineteenth-century Italian opera; their repercussions on the idea of the operatic event; and the encounter of Italian opera with other European theatrical systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Print culture
Re-workings and translations
The emergence of the operatic canon
Censorship
Italian opera as an artwork
Reception
Genre