Fall Lecture Series

Tuesday, September 8

Il Trittico by Giacomo Puccini - Timothy Flynn, A native of the Washington D. C. area, received his undergraduate degree in music from George Mason University (Virginia) and his Masters and Ph.D. in musicology from Northwestern University (IL). He is currently chair of Performing Arts at Olivet College where he conducts the choral ensembles, teaches music history, music theory, and interdisciplinary courses in the arts and humanities.  In addition he directs the opera and musical theatre productions at the college.  Under Dr. Flynn’s leadership, the Olivet Chamber Singers perform regularly throughout Michigan and in Niagara-on-the-Lake and Toronto, ON.  As an organist, he has performed on recitals and concerts in Rome, Florence, Paris, and the south of France, and currently Dr. Flynn serves as director of music and organist at St. Mary Roman Catholic Cathedral in Lansing.  A recipient of the Leland Fox Award for scholarship from the National Opera Association, his winning paper “Camille Saint-Saëns and Opera: An Exploration of Unknown Primary Source Material” appeared in the March 2006 Opera Journal and last summer he presented a paper in Dublin Ireland at the Biennial Conference of Nineteenth Century Music pertaining to a work by Charles Gounod that he recently discovered in the Northwestern University Music Library.  Dr. Flynn is also a published composer of choral and organ music (Morning Star and Augsburg Publishers) and has recently published two scholarly monographs through Routledge (NY), one on Camille Saint-Saëns (2006) and another on Charles François Gounod (2008).

Tuesday, September 15

The Abduction from the Seraglio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Evan Baker, An internationally published and recognized scholar in the history of opera production, holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies, with a specialization in operatic stage design, from New York University, as well as a B.A. and M.A. in Theatre Arts from UCLA.  He has lectured and written extensively in his field, both in English, German, and in Italian.

Mr. Baker's specialty is the interplay of theatrical traditions, the realities and requirements of production, and the musical inspiration required to create that unique artistic creation, the opera.  He is adept at bringing the historical context in which to understand a complex work of art, in a lively and engaging presentation appropriate to the audience.

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Tuesday, September 29

Preview of 2009-10 Season, West Bay Opera Company. The speaker, José Luis Moscovich, will give highlights of the WBO season, aided by live singers of the company.

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Tuesday, October 6

The Daughter of the Regiment by Gaetano Donizetti - Mary Ann Smart, is Gladyce Arata Terrill Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (U of California Press, 2004), looked at the ways music gives signals for stage movement and acting style in repertory stretching from the first French grand operas of the 1830s to Verdi’s Aida and Wagner’s Ring. She is editor of the critical edition of Donizetti’s last opera, Dom Sébastien, and of the articles on Bellini and Donizetti for the revised Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Smart has published articles in the Cambridge Opera Journal, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Women and Music, Nineteenth-Century Music, Representations, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and contributed to the Cambridge Companions to Verdi and to Grand Opéra.

In 2007 Smart was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association and the International Musicological Society. She is currently completing a book about the connections between opera and progressive politics in nineteenth-century Italy, tentatively titled Risorgimento Fantasies.

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Tuesday, October 13

Salome, by Richard Strauss - Richard Taruskin - Among those who write about music today, Richard Taruskin stands out for his keen insight into source material; his rigorous musical analysis; his wide-ranging grasp of the related social, cultural, and political background; his high degree of serendipitous discovery; his gift for looking at the familiar through a new lens; and his use of language, combining both scholarly authority with wit and ease of expression. Taruskin's books, articles, and lectures frequently overturn previously accepted ideas in highly original, perceptive, and often controversial ways that have earned him the respect, admiration, and, sometimes, ire of his colleagues and readers. His activities in music cover a surprising gamut: music critic, gambist and conductor of early music ensembles, teacher, and eminent musicologist. His scholarly work is equally diverse. He has written about the chanson and sacred music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, issues of musical performance practice, music historiography, the relationship of music and politics, and the music of Russia from the eighteenth century to the present. In addition to his writings about music, he has recorded and edited numerous Renaissance musical works. To the lay reader, he is well-known as a reviewer for the New York Times and the New Republic, for his program notes to recordings and opera performances, and for his recent voluminous contribution to the musicological literature, The Oxford History of Western Music.

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Tuesday, October 20

Preview of 2009-10 Season, Opera San José. Larry Hancock will speak about the OSJ season, with musical excerpts illustrated by live singers.

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Tuesday, November 3

Otello, by Giuseppe Verdi - Alexandra Amati-Camperi, originally from Italy, holds a BA/MA in Slavic Studies and Philology from the Università degli Studi di Pisa (Italy), degrees in piano from the Conservatory of Music of Lucca (Italy), and both an MA and a Ph.D. in Musicology from Harvard University. She has taught at Harvard, UC Davis, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is presently Associate Professor and Director of the Music Program at the University of San Francisco.

Her interests include the Italian Renaissance, Italian opera, Feminist criticism, Romantic piano music, and German Baroque choral music. She has published and read papers on Renaissance, operatic, and gender related topics in several journals and conferences. Her book, Philippe Verdelot: Madrigali a sei voci, was published in 2004. The critical edition of Rossini’s 1810 one-act farsa La cambiale di matrimonio for Baerenreiter Verlag is in the editing stages, and she is now working on a book about the presentation and treatment of women in opera, as seen through a few settings of the Orpheus myth, tentatively titled Euridice: The Evolution of the Mythical and Musical Other. An article on the castrati in feminine roles is forthcoming, and one on the first operatic heroines has just been published in Studi musicali.

She has served on the Council of the American Musicological Society, as the President of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bach Choir, the Chair of the Artistic Advisory Committee of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and on the Board of Directors of the Lycée Français Lapérouse. She is a professional program annotator and pre-concert lecturer for many Bay Area organizations, including the SF Symphony, the SF Opera and its six Bay Area Guilds, the SF Bach Choir, the SF Boys Chorus, Philharmonia Baroque, and others. Her favorite non academic activities include singing and playing the piano, working out, avidly skiing, reading, knitting, and especially playing with her three kids and watching them grow, musically and otherwise.

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