Mapping Community (through) Opera

June 11-13, 2027 | Vanderbilt University | Nashville, TN 

Co-conveners: Allison Chu, Jennifer Q. McGuire, Edward Venn, Katie Gardner 

The term “community” is ubiquitous in the culture of the performing arts, and opera is no exception. Opera has long been thought to bring communities together, performed for a communal audience, and create community amongst performers. Opera can represent communities on stage, and opera’s audiences have stereotypically been of a privileged and (often) white demographic. In some guises, community opera has moved out of the physical opera house. Ultimately, these community engagement initiatives and activities have now become integral to an opera company’s function, especially as opera seeks to argue for its own relevance. 

This conference seeks to bring together scholars, performers, practitioners, and administrators of opera to discuss the wide-ranging approaches to the relationship between opera and community. Up for examination is the term “community opera”: how might we define community opera? Who participates in community opera? Why create community opera? How does opera represent communities?

The conference will take place in person in Nashville, TN, and will include a free performance of opera excerpts by the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre on Saturday, June 12th.  Twenty-minute papers and one-hour discussion panels will be considered; audio/visual projection capacities are available for all presentations. Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words and can be submitted here. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously, and participants will be notified by December 15th. Questions may be directed to Allison Chu at allison.chu@vanderbilt.edu. The conference is co-organized with L’ORFEO at the University of Leeds (https://lorfeo.leeds.ac.uk; email: LORFEO@leeds.ac.uk). 

The Mapping Community (through) Opera Conference is made possible by support from the Peter & Lois Fyfe Faculty Excellence Fund.