The intralingual in contemporary opera

 

Opera is at the melting point between poetry, music and drama. Since its birth in the early seventeenth century, opera has reflected on the essentials of poetry and examined communication across languages. It has exploited the marriage with music to delineate place and character, suspend time, and probe topics of importance to the individual and to society as a whole.

This sub-strand of the project will investigate the intralingual in contemporary opera, looking at new works employing multiple languages, ancient languages, indigenous languages and invented languages.

The music sub-strand includes the creation of two new operas: The Tale of Januarie by Julian Philips and Stephen Plaice will open the project and a new work based on the Daedalus myth by Philip Grange and Simon Armitage will close the project.

Research team

Paul Archbold (IMLR, School of Advanced Study, University of London)

Phil Grange (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester)