The operatic canon as cultural heritage. Observations at national operas and regional cultural centers in the Baltic Sea region

Management: Prof. Dr. Gesa zur Nieden

Member: Dr. Verena Liu

Recently, there is an interesting shift taking place in how big opera houses around the world present themselves and what terms they use: Instead of ‚repertoire‘ or ‚canon‘ we hear and read of ‚cultural heritage‘ when it comes to describe the practice of opera as a sustainable concept for future generations. The concept of opera as cultural heritage does not only include aspects like the preservation of opera buildings, theater costumes or stage settings, it even more addresses the accessibility of opera for a social and cultural diverse audience, for new media as well as for the discussion about sustainability regarding global opera tourism and climate change.

The subproject examines the changes induced by this new framing to the operatic life of the Baltic Sea region, i.e. its impact on the repertoire, the architecture and public relations of opera houses as well as on the practices of opera production and reception. In the first part of the subproject (1b), the Royal Danish Opera House Copenhagen and the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet Oslo will be explored. In order to pursue the question of the extent to which opera as a cultural heritage is a phenomenon concentrated in the capital cities or which developments can be traced in the Baltic Sea region in general, a second focus (1c) is on the opera houses in Bromberg/Bydgoszcz (Poland) and Umeå (Sweden), which were conceived as regional cultural centres.

In these four venues, local adaptations and extensions of globally disseminated repertoires as well as staging and reception practices between opera and music theatre, bourgeois practices and popularization, exoticism and interculturality are examined. The aim is to describe the contemporary ontology of opera between immaterial (musical genre of opera, opera-specific professions) and material cultural heritage (opera buildings, stage design, costumes) using an integral approach of sociology of architecture, history of institutions and ethnographic methods to study musical practices.