Title: A Theory of Operatic Scene Type

Abstract: Scholars of opera since Salome - a placeholder for the historical moment at which one could no longer count on functional harmony, straightforward narrative, or tonally-defined forms at the opera - need ways to talk about opera that are not confined to the silos of composer, subgenre, and style, nor reduced to mere reportage. Inspired by Saariaho's L'amour de loin, I recognized that certain scenes have recurred over the centuries, presumably because they make for good theater and offer tantalizing opportunities for musical and poetic expression as well as virtuosic display: love duets, diegetic songs, rage arias. Each of these narrative nodes has accrued features pertaining to music, vocalism, poetry, character, performance practice, and/or staging, that, in the aggregate, constitute a scene type. And, most importantly, each scene type remains recognizable as such regardless of musical style. In other words, the scene type is akin to operatic DNA. This talk sketches out my theory and demonstrates its application in excerpts drawn from a wide range of repertoire.

Joy H. Calico is Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of Musicology at UCLA. Her scholarship focuses on interdisciplinary Cold War cultural politics, opera since 1900, and Arnold Schoenberg. Her current projects include a theory of twentieth- and twenty-first-century opera according to scene type built on Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin (under contract with University of California Press), and a study of the Arnold Schoenberg Gesamtausgabe as cultural diplomacy and intimate history in the Cold War. Her most recent publication is a coedited volume entitled Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900 published by Oxford in June 2026. She and Daniel Chua launched the California Studies in Global Musicology (CSGM) book series in 2024. She is also a member of the international working team of the Black Opera Research Network, and hosted the international symposium Opera | Black | Queer at UCLA earlier this month.

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