Writing

My dissertation investigates the trend of new documentary operas, or operas that incorporate documentary techniques, aesthetics, and source materials, that, since 2000, have proliferated throughout the American opera industry. As an analogue to documentary theater, documentary operas draw on sources such as court documents, oral histories, and firsthand written accounts. In particular, I focus on the affordances of new documentary operas for engaging with the genre’s racial dynamics and political resonances, both for artists of color and in broader American culture. Attending to the ways primary sources assist in re-creating specific historical contexts and racialized identities, I argue that opera contributes to documentary work by expanding representations of reality. Simultaneously, documentary operas use the art form’s heavily stylized aesthetics to produce multilayered sociopolitical commentaries about American history and contemporary culture. Combining theater and performances studies approaches with theoretical frameworks from documentary studies, critical race studies, and opera studies, I illustrate how new documentary operas not only contribute to the twenty-first century renaissance of American opera, but also challenge the genre’s long history of exclusion, racism, and inequity.