Fonds 86 - Opera Exchange fonds

Identity area

Reference code

OTUFM 86

Title

Opera Exchange fonds

Date(s)

  • 2001-2015, 2001-2009 predominant (Creation)

Level of description

Fonds

Extent and medium

23 cm of textual records

Context area

Name of creator

(1953-)

Biographical history

Caryl Clark is a retired Professor of Music History and Culture at the University of Toronto and Fellow at Trinity College. She studied music history at the University of Western Ontario (Honours BMus), McGill University (MA) and Cornell University (PhD.). Her research and teaching interests include Enlightenment aesthetics, Haydn studies, gender and ethnicity in opera, the politics of musical reception, piano cultures, Glenn Gould, and music entrepreneurship. Alongside Linda Hutcheon, she was co-chair of The Opera Exchange and presented over 40 educational symposia on the multi-disciplinary nature of opera.

Name of creator

(1947-)

Biographical history

Linda Hutcheon is a University Professor Emeritus in the University of Toronto Department of English and the Centre for Comparative Literature, where she began teaching in 1988 after receiving her PhD. from the University of Toronto in 1975. Alongside Caryl Clark, she was co-chair of The Opera Exchange and presented over 40 educational symposia on the multi-disciplinary nature of opera.

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Donated by Caryl Clark (A2023-09).

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Fonds consists of programs, speaking notes, correspondence, and newspaper clippings relating the Opera Exchange, an initiative co-organized by University of Toronto professors Caryl Clark and Linda Hutcheon, in conjunction with the Munk Centre for International studies (2001-2002) and the Canadian Opera Company (COC) (2003-2015).

The Opera Exchange held three symposia per year, with the aim to create a collaborative environment where students, faculty, and members of the public could discuss opera from various perspectives and disciplines, including musicology, literature, drama, history, political science, and gender studies. The program was initially named "The Humanities Initiative" and early symposia focused on works performed by the University of Toronto Opera School, Opera Atelier, and the COC.

Symposia:

  • 2002 Humanities Initiative symposia (Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto)
    • Transformations of Salome (January 19, 2002)
    • Iron Road: intersecting dreams and dialogues (March 1, 2002)
    • The many faces of Boris Godunov (April 6, 2002) [in collaboration with the Centre for Russian and East European studies)
  • 2002-2003 Humanities Initiative symposia (Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto)
    • Oedipus Rex: plagues and politics (October 5, 2002)
    • Apprenticing with a sorceress: Handel's Alcina (November 15, 2002)
    • Taptoo! (March 8, 2003)
  • 2003-2004 Opera Exchange symposia (Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto
    • Peter Grimes: the loner vs. the town (October 4, 2003)
    • Falstaff: the maestro takes on the bard (January 31, 2004)
    • Die Walküre: why Wagner? (April 17, 2004)
  • 2004-2005 Opera Exchange symposia (Bader Theatre, Victoria University)
    • The Handmaid's tale: no balm in this Gilead (October 2, 2004)
    • Siegfried: the forging of a hero (January 29, 2005)
    • Tancredi: Sicilians, Saracens, singers (April 2, 2005) [in conjunction with an American Musicological Society chapter meeting at the University of Toronto]
  • 2005-2006 Opera Exchange symposia (Faculty of Music and Bader Theatre)
    • Rodelinda and Carmen: girls night out! (October 22, 2005 at Walter Hall)
    • Götterdämmerung: return of the ring (February 4, 2006 at Bader Theatre)
    • Wozzeck : opera for a modern age (April 1, 2006 at Bader Theatre)
  • 2006 Opera Exchange symposia on Wagner's Ring Cycle (Bader Theatre, Victoria University)
    • Cycle I: putting the ring on stage (September 16, 2006)
    • Cycle II: putting the ring in context (September 13, 2006)
    • Cycle III: putting the ring on record (September 30, 2006 at Hilton Hotel)
  • 2007-2008 Opera Exchange symposia (Bader Theatre, Victoria University)
    • Who (what) is the real Don Carlos? on Verdi's Don Carlos (October 27, 2007)
    • To be or not to be: from the house of the (living dead) on Janacek's From the House of the Dead (February 9, 2008)
    • Letting down your hair with Pelléas and Mélisande (May 20, 2008)
  • 2008-2009 Telling Stories through Opera, The Opera Exchange, three symposia in conjunction with the Jackman Humanities Institute
    • Monster opera: Prokofiev's War and Peace (October 18, 2008)
    • Love and liberation: Beethoven's Fidelio (January 31, 2009)
    • "Antique fables and fairy toys": Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (May 9, 2009)
  • 2009-2010 Opera Exchange symposia (Faculty of Music, University of Toronto)
    • Stravinsky/Lepage: a magical meeting of minds (October 17, 2009)
    • Shakespeare's Othello and Verdi's Otello: staging jealousy (February 6, 2010)
    • Staging Der fliegende Holländer for our times? (May 1, 2010)
  • 2010-2011 "Voice and Spectacle," The Opera Exchange, three symposia presented by the Jackman Humanities Institute, Faculty of Music, and the Canadian Opera Company
    • Death in Venice gets a new life in Toronto (October 16, 2010)
    • Nixon in China: giving voice to our own history (February 13, 2011)
    • Ariadne auf Naxos from A-Z (May 14, 2011)
  • 2011-2012 Opera Exchange symposia (Faculty of Music, University of Toronto)
    • A Greek family reunion: Gluck's Iphegenie en Tauride (October 1, 2011)
    • Long distant loving: Saariaho's L'amour loin/Love from afar (February 4, 2012)
    • Wilde time: Zemlinsky's A Florentine tragedy (April 22, 2012)
  • 2012-2013 Opera Exchange symposia (Faculty of Music, University of Toronto)
    • Let's lighten up! : operetta in context, on Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus (October 13, 2012)
    • Wagner and adaptation: transformations and excess, on Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (January 31-Febrary 2, 2013)
    • Singing from the scaffold, on Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (May 11, 2013
  • 2014 Opera Exchange symposium (Munk School of Global Affairs)
    • Coming home: Handel's Hercules (April 4, 2014)
  • 2014-2015 Opera Exchange symposia (Faculty of Music, University of Toronto)
    • Staging operatic comedy: Verdi's Falstaff in context (September 27, 2014)
    • Directors take the stage: debating Regietheater (January 17, 2015).

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Files are arranged in chronological order and grouped by symposium.

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Publication note

Related publications:
Clark, Caryl, Linda Hutcheon, Sherry Lee, Tegan Niziol, and Carolyne Sumner. “Hearing Riel.” University of Toronto Quarterly 87, no. 4 (2018). [introduction and 10 articles]

Clark, Caryl, Katherine R. Larson, Sherry Lee, and Linda Hutcheon. “Operatics: The Interdisciplinary Workings of Opera Introduction.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 4 (2012). [9 articles]

Clark, Caryl, Linda Hutcheon, and Michael Hutcheon. “Wagner's Ring," The Opera Quarterly 23, no. 2-3 (2007). [9 articles and reviews]

Clark, Caryl, and Linda Hutcheon. “Songs and subversion: Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2006). [7 articles]

Clark, Caryl, and Linda Hutcheon. “Opera and Interdisciplinarity II.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no. 2 (2005). [13 articles]

Clark, Caryl, and Linda Hutcheon. “Opera and Interdisciplinarity.” University of Toronto Quarterly 72, no. 4 (2003). [7 articles]

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Box 1, Box 2

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