Report of Monthly Regular Meeting May 2023 (The 210th Meeting of Opera Research Group)
Waseda Institute for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (WIROM), Comprehensive Research Organization, Waseda University
- Time and Date: May 13th (Sat.) 2023, 16:30 – 18:00 (JST)
- Format: Online meeting (Zoom)
- Presenter: OHTA, Misako
- Affiliation, Position: Kobe University Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Associate Professor
Adjunct researcher at the Waseda Institute for Research in Opera and Music Theatre - Title: “Kurt Weill’s Social Music Drama and Musical Theatre as a Social Medium”
- Language: Japanese
- Abstract:
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) produced 30 different music dramas during his lifetime, and following a 2014 study by Stephen Hinton, Weill’s music drama as a whole came to be interpreted and understood in terms of “stages of reform.” In this presentation, I would like to take an overall look at various musical plays, categorizing them as “social music dramas” with reference to the theory and practice of Weill’s music dramas. Musical theatre refers to theater as a “social medium” that directly addresses important societal issues of the time through the use of appropriate musical forms. This perspective has significant implications for the understanding and performance of works in our time in terms of a transnational reception.
We will discuss Weill’s music theater as “social media” as well as the aesthetics and social impact of its creation from the following three perspectives, along with specific examples of his works.
1. Radio and opera
2. Educational media
3. Political media - Profile of Presenter:
Misako Ohta is an associate professor of the Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Division of Human Expression, at Kobe University. Born in Tokyo, she studied musicology at Tokyo University of the Arts (BA) and German Literature at Gakushuin University (MA). Her PhD in music history (University of Vienna, 2001) examined artistic intention and its public effects in Kurt Weill’s musical theater from the 1920s into the 1930s. She teaches Western music history within its cultural context and transnational perspective and has been a music critic for the regional edition (Kansai area) of the Yomiuri Shinbun since 2003. In March 2022, her critical biography of Kurt Weill in Japanese was published by Iwanami Shoten.
researchmap.jp/Misako_Ohta - Moderator: ONO, Hanae
*Comment: There were 29 participants.
