Information of Monthly Regular Meeting February 2022 (The 200th Meeting of Opera Research Group)

Waseda Institute for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (WIROM), Comprehensive Research Organization, Waseda University

• Time and Date: February 5th (Sat.) 2022, 16:30-18:00(JST)
• Format : Online meeting (Zoom)
  – Registration is required by February 2nd (Wed.). Please fill out the following Google-Form : https://forms.gle/UVzNGtghb4D9mWbs8
  -The invitation e-mail via zoom will be sent to the registrants on 4th February.
• Presenter : OHTA, Misako
• Affiliation, Position :
  Kobe University Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Associate Professor
  Adjunct researcher at the Waseda Institute for Research in Opera and Music Theatre
• Title : The Aesthetics of Opera and Musicals: Their Continuity and Disjuncture—From the Perspective of Weill Studies
• Language : Japanese
• Abstract :
  Kurt Weill (1900-1950), as a composer of “musical theater,” from operas and Lehrstück (like “Der Lindberghflug” and “Der Jasager”) to Broadway musicals, created various types of musical theater. Even in the corona situation, the presence of experimental and social music theater is still alive and well, with various online performances. The changes in his works before and after his exile led to the “two Weills” controversy, and there was also the background of the Cold War. Now the focus is on the continuity as well as the “difference” and “division” in his works between the German and American periods. This issue is also an acute problem in the understanding of performances of Weill’s musical theater.

   

  In this presentation, I would like to consider the issue of continuity and fragmentation in the aesthetics of operas and musicals from the perspective of Weill studies, focusing on the following three points :
  1. The “two Weills” controversy as a restarting point
  2. Opera and musicals in Weill’s own music theory
  3. Musicals and Brecht’s theory

• Profile of Presenter :
  Misako Ohta is an associate professor of the Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Division of Human Expression, at Kobe University. Born in Tokyo, she studied musicology at Tokyo University of the Arts (BA) and German Literature at Gakushuin University (MA). Her PhD in music history (University of Vienna, 2001) examined artistic intention and its public effects in Kurt Weill’s musical theater from the 1920s into the 1930s. She teaches Western music history within its cultural context and transnational perspective and has been a music critic for the regional edition (Kansai area) of the Yomiuri Shinbun since 2003. She is preparing a critical biography of Kurt Weill in Japanese.researchmap.jp/Misako_Ohta
• Moderator: KUGIMIYA, Takako

Next meeting will be held on 9th April. (Sat.) 2022

• Presenter : Keisuke Kato
• Moderator : T.B.D.

Waseda Institute for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (WIROM), Comprehensive Research Organization, Waseda University :
https://w3.waseda.jp/prj-opera-mt/

e-mail address : operaken-uketsuke[at]list.waseda.jp　( [at] = @)