Output details

Digital opera, new means and new meanings : an introduction in two voices

The _International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media_ is an internationally distributed, peer-reviewed journal published by Intellect in print and electronic form. Together with composer Craig Vear (De Montfort University), I guest edited issue 8.1, 'Digital Opera: New Means and New Meanings'. This issue grew out of a conference at the University of York (9-10 May 2011), which brought together international theorists and practitioners from diverse fields (the opera industry, composition, digital art, computer science, musicology) in order to define the emergent genre of digital opera. Until now, opera scholarship has focused overwhelmingly on mainstream opera practice and is therefore largely uninfluenced by developments within digital performance research. Recent opera scholarship has dealt with the digital dissemination of traditional opera, but has not considered the possibility of an entirely new type of digital opera, in which digital technology plays a constitutive, rather than purely scenic or dissemination-related, role. Issue 8.1 of _IJPADM_ has set a significant precedent in establishing a genuinely new scholarly discourse on digital opera that incorporates cross-disciplinary theory and practice-led research. The impact of the conference and special issue can be seen in the establishment in 2012 of a Digital Opera Research Group at De Montfort University, led by Professor Simon Emmerson, keynote speaker at the 2011 conference. I have joined the group and will contribute on an inter-institutional basis to the group’s research initiatives, which include a new PhD route in digital opera practice. I have also disseminated my digital opera research associated with this output in conference papers at the Royal Musical Association and Performance Studies International annual conferences (2012).