Conference Agenda

Featured speaker Mauro Fosco Bertola, on "Dreaming Beyond the Subject: Modernism, Dream and Opera in Kaija Saariaho and Salvatore Sciarrino."

Opera Studies since the 1990s have consistently dismantled the biased, universalist stance that opera is “all about people”, an on-going exploration of psychological intricacies and timeless human values. Consequently, the focus of our understanding of opera has shifted towards aspects such as race, gender, cultural specificities as well as its staging and its embeddedness within a highly complex commercial network.

Nevertheless, over the last two to three decades contemporary composers such as George Benjamin, Thomas Adès, Kaija Saariaho or Salvatore Sciarrino have written highly successful operas that focus on timeless human values, depict psychologically complex characters and emphasise subjective expression. How can we interpret this development? Bertola intends to explore these questions by considering the role of dreams in the operas of two leading European composers of recent decades, Kaija Saariaho and Salvatore Sciarrino. The dream, with its deep connection to the human psyche since the 19th century and its strong roots within operatic tradition, will serve as a cultural-historical tool to examine the presence and significance of subjectivity, individual expression and, more broadly, humanist ideals in contemporary musical theatre.