Opera Across Borders | University of Chicago Arts & Humanities

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For almost nine decades, the University of Chicago Department of Music has shaped the study and practice of music, embracing both historical traditions and modern innovations. Its distinguished faculty guide graduate programs in Composition, Ethnomusicology, and Music History and Theory, and also provide an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in music.
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MUSI 20127 Listening to K-Pop
Document the sound practices of sacred communities on Chicago’s South Side through ethnographic research, collaborative filmmaking, and digital mapping.
MUSI 21026 Bob Dylan
Explore what makes Bob Dylan compelling by examining his lyrics, music, and evolving performances across famous songs and deep cuts.
MUSI 24026 Listening In Place
This course engages students in a quarter-long music ethnography project documenting the music and sound practices of sacred communities on Chicago’s South Side.
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MUSI 20127 Listening to K-Pop
Explore how K-pop’s distinctive sound and culture emerge through fan listening, industry structures, and close analysis of songs and videos.
MUSI 21026 Bob Dylan
Explore what makes Bob Dylan compelling by examining his lyrics, music, and evolving performances across famous songs and deep cuts.
MUSI 24026 Listening In Place
Document the sound practices of sacred communities on Chicago’s South Side through ethnographic research, collaborative filmmaking, and digital mapping.
Explore Undergraduate Courses →

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“Opera without Borders” explores how markers of race, indigeneity, and other identities blur historical time and disrupt geopolitical space on the operatic stage. How does opera operate in the new arenas of cosmopolitan citizenship during our present historical moment, when the unitary monoliths of nations, citizens, and identities are no longer firmly in place and means of travel and communication are quickly transforming? How and why have patterns of exploration, trade, and migration, forced and voluntary, colonial and decolonial, generated new operatic genres, new means of operatic production, and new kinds of opera producers (librettists, composers, directors, choreographers, dramaturgs, etc.)? 

Among our cases are the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Orphan of Zhao (2012); the Paris Opera’s hiphop staging of Rameau’s Les indes galantes (2019); Schikaneder and Mozart’s Magic Flute (1791) reimagined as Impempe Yomlingo (2007-2011) by the township artists of Capetown; and circulations of Cantonese opera in Chinatowns from Vancouver and San Francisco to New York and Honolulu.