Project description
The place for opera in a digital world
Has the way fans look at opera changed? Today, interactions between audiences and theatres occur to a significant extent via online platforms and digital media. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the divide between stage and screen even more blurred. By focusing on contemporary opera fandom, the EU-funded OPANDA project reconsiders past audience practices while it envisions possible future ones. The study is based on a comparative and qualitative analysis of representative case studies, combining digital ethnography on web communities and fanzines, participant observation at opera companies (such as the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Opéra national de Paris), and interviews with opera fans and professionals.
Objective
Today, interactions between audiences and theatres occur to a significant extent via online platforms and digital media. OPANDA studies the impact of these transformative technologies on opera fandom. Although recent research has addressed the digital dissemination of opera, the phenomenon of cyber-fandom remains under-researched. Situated at the intersection of musicology, sociology and media studies, the project asks how opera fans perform their passion digitally. This entails the investigation of their interactions on the web, but the project also considers how cyber-fandom intersects with traditional fan behaviour. In a post-pandemic and hyper-mediatised society in which the divide between stage and screen is constantly blurred, the project reconsiders past audience practices and envisions possible future ones.
OPANDA aims at providing a pioneering study of today’s opera fans (i.e. the most active operagoers), including their digital practices and communities. To reach this goal, OPANDA is based on a comparative and qualitative analysis of representative case studies, combining digital ethnography on web communities and fanzines, participant observation at opera companies (La Scala, Paris Opera, the New York Metropolitan Opera), and interviews with fans.
Dr Nicolò Palazzetti (Researcher) is well placed to carry out this research thanks to an outstanding background in musicology and sociology, and a solid expertise in performing ethnography among opera fans. By situating his project at Sapienza University of Rome, he advances his career in new directions. He has the key opportunity to work with Prof. Emanuele Senici (Supervisor), a prominent opera scholar specialising in opera and media, and with Prof. Romana Andò (co-supervisor), an expert in fan studies. A training-based secondment at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre in Melbourne and a dissemination-based secondment at the Music Department of Yale University support the achievement of the project.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
MSCA-PF - MSCA-PFCoordinator
00185 Roma
Italy