Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
Use the search bar to search by name or title of paper/session. Note that this search bar does not search by keyword.
Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:58:01am EDT
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
Opera Displaced Session Chair: Peng Liu | |
    | |
Mélisande’s Water Sleeves: Re-inscribing Debussy in Shanghai (2016) University of Cambridge, Despite local critical acclaim that began in the 1920s, Pelléas et Mélisande did not receive its Chinese premiere until 2016 (Shanghai). The staging was designed as a Suzhou-style garden by theatre director Yi Liming. Although the principal roles were performed by Western opera singers, their acting and costumes drew inspiration from Kunqu opera. Furthermore, the transitions between acts utilised the Kunqu technique of scene changes through sliding doors, as seen in traditional zhezixi performances. In Peter Brook’s Impressions of Pelléas (1992), which situates the opera within an intimate, fin-de-siècle European salon, the casting of an Asian Mélisande in Asian-inspired costume indicates Brook’s intention to present her as a figure seemingly from “another world”. By contrast, Yi’s Chinese production eliminates any hierarchy, with all scenic elements rendered according to a local understanding of Debussy. Mélisande is no longer constructed as an exoticised “Other” but instead becomes an organic part of the whole. Current scholarship regarding cross-cultural comparison between Chinese and Western opera remains relatively sparse. Lincoln-Hyde’s comparative study (2023) of The White-Haired Girl and Lucia di Lammermoor provides a valuable approach. Within Western art, Albright’s (2000) analysis of dissonant versus consonant relations between music and stage in multi-media modernist works offers a way which to rethink the consonance that director Yi emphasised between Debussy’s music, its staging and even its reception by Chinese audiences. Drawing upon interviews with the director, analysis of critical reviews, and primary research on Chinese Debussy reception from 1910, this paper argues that the 2016 Pelléas offers a comprehensive reflection of Chinese perceptions of Debussy, encompassing both the director’s and audiences’ contributions to a distinctly Chinese aesthetic and epistemological engagement with his music across an entire century. I contend that this opera was not artificially Sinicised to cater to Chinese audiences. Instead, it represents an authentic, uncontentious and collective interpretation of Debussy. The dissonance that Western audiences might perceive between Debussy’s music and the Kunqu elements was experienced as consonance by Chinese audiences, reflecting a cultural and aesthetic harmony unique to this context. | |