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.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:53am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Sounding Soft Power: Musical Diplomacy Across Borders Session Chair: Diau-long Shen | |
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Performing Italy: Opera and Public Representation in Italian Immigrant Communities, ca. 1850–1900 Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian opera occupied a central place in U.S. musical life, extending well beyond the opera house through domestic music-making, band concerts, civic celebrations, and other forms of public entertainment. Indeed, as scholars have shown, most Americans encountered opera in mediated form (Preston), while the growing association of foreign-language opera with white urban elites in the late nineteenth century transformed its cultural and social meanings (Bentley). Within this broader context, this paper argues that Italian opera fulfilled a dual function for Italian immigrants: on the one hand, it served as a form of cultural and political mediation in relations with American society; on the other, it acted as a symbol of national belonging. Drawing on scholarship on the role of bands and immigrant bandleaders in nineteenth-century American musical life (Bornemann, Camus, Greene, Martin), as well as on Italian-language newspapers and archival materials from the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, I offer the first account of the cultural and political significance that Italian opera acquired within Italian immigrant communities. The paper is organized into three sections. The first examines the presence of Italian opera in the repertories of major Italian-born bandleaders active in the United States, including Francis Maria Scala, Francesco Fanciulli, Alberto Maria Cappa, and Alessandro Liberati. The second compares these repertories with the musical programs performed at events organized by Italian communities between the 1860s and the end of the century, highlighting continuities and divergences in the selection of operas and individual excerpts, as well as the distinct meanings they assumed in different social, political, and cultural settings. The third focuses on the chorus “O Signore, dal tetto natio” from Verdi’s I Lombardi alla prima crociata. By analyzing the relationship between text, music, and performance context, I show how this chorus could assume different meanings for different audiences, functioning simultaneously as a marker of collective identity within Italian communities and as a public vehicle for the cultural and political representation of Italy. | |