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The University of Oxford is a leading centre for research in opera and music theatre, where the work of musicologists and practitioners intersects to mutual benefit, and outputs have attracted the wide attention of new audiences well beyond the academic community. Oxford Opera encompasses a broad historical range, but shares a set of common aims and objectives: exploring new and historical modes of performance and realisation; challenging received operatic conventions and performance traditions in a scholarly and creative manner; and disseminating research results to new listeners through professional collaborations. Young people, the general public, and other professional practitioners have all been beneficiaries.
The impact claimed in this statement comes from the composition and performance history of Fantasias by Julian Anderson, a major work for large orchestra composed in 2009. Three key spheres of impact are noted: first, improving the technical and expressive abilities of seasoned and young professional musicians through the preparation and performance of a challenging piece of contemporary music; secondly, drawing a wider audience than that which normally listens to uncompromising contemporary music; and lastly, supporting young composers by the involvement of Fantasias' composer in various bodies concerned with new music.
Roger Parker's case study involves his critical edition of Donizetti's opera Le Duc d'Albe, which was given its world premiere at Vlaamse Opera (Belgium) with an international cast in May-June 2012. This edition made available to the public, for the first time, what is in effect a new Donizetti opera, never before (even in the composer's lifetime) performed in its original language and in this particular configuration. The impact of the performances is demonstrable in international reviews and in the fact that a commercial recording of the opera is now planned (by Opera Rara of London).
`Anya 17 is not just an opera. It's a campaign' (cast member's blog, http://tinyurl.com/ne64uqt).
Anya 17 (an opera about human trafficking), first performed in March 2012, generated wide media and civil society attention. 13 UK and international anti-trafficking campaigning groups have endorsed the opera and used it to raise awareness and help leverage their agenda to change legislation. Third sector and media attention has taken the research to a wider community than just the original audience, winning recognition and enabling follow-through of various kinds. Collaboration, publicity and support from NGOs has enabled Anya17 to further its reach internationally, with performances in Romania, Germany, the UK and the USA in the near future creating opportunities for developing further impacts on opera audiences, campaigning organisations, wider civil society and government in Europe and America.
University of Glasgow researcher Zoë Strachan has helped Scottish Opera to expand and diversify its audience through the creation of two new operas, Sublimation and The Lady from the Sea. Submission was commissioned as part of Scottish Opera's innovative Five:15 programme, designed as a platform for the development of new operas by new artists with the aim of attracting new audiences to the art form. Five:15 brought together five pairs of well-known writers and composers who were `new to opera' to create five 15-minute `shorts', to be performed at venues across Scotland. By encouraging younger people to engage with opera, the project was intended to address funder and public perceptions that its audiences come from a narrow and ageing demographic. Sublimation (2010) played to sold-out venues around Scotland and was chosen by Cape Town Opera in South Africa to open its new programme in November 2010, being performed to a total of 3,437 people. The Lady from the Sea had its premier at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012 before touring to Glasgow, reaching a combined audience of over 1,800. Both productions attracted critical acclaim in broadsheet and music press.
This case study details the impact of collaboration between three colleagues at the University of Aberdeen - Mealor, Stollery (Music) and Davidson (History of Art) and how the resulting work has contributed to a reassessment of opera in the twenty-first century in the context of the work of Scottish composers such as Thea Musgrave, Peter Maxwell Davies, Judith Weir and Sally Beamish. In 2010 the team created the opera 74 Degrees North, commissioned by Scottish Opera for its FIVE:15 series of new operas.
The impact of the work can be evidenced in the following ways:
a) Securing of excellent reviews in national press;
b) Near capacity audiences over eleven performances at three national venues;
c) Plans with Scottish Opera to create a new longer version of the work for future performance nationally and internationally;
d) Further collaboration between composers in Music department to create new work with the capacity to achieve impact;
e) sound festival 2012's commitment to a weekend of new approaches to opera composition;
f) Development of a substantive and continuing relationship between Scottish Opera and University of Aberdeen.
The case study shows how short chamber compositions by composer Piers Hellawell have transformed the musical experience of young musicians within the on-going Chamber Music 2000 project in England. Circles of impact radiate from his provision of practicable new chamber work for ensembles: children from 8 to 16 have explored the challenging demands of performing contemporary music created for them in an individual and exciting idiom. They have participated in new experiences in communal music-making; they have processed new notated instructions and encountered unfamiliar sound-combinations; they have become part of a collaboration with professional artists during coaching. Through these experiences young musicians have been equipped to give a world premiere in an international venue, a life- enhancing experience.