Writing

My dissertation, titled “Documentary Opera: Archives, Identities, and Politics in Contemporary American Opera,”

traces the growing trend of American operas since the year 2000 that combine archival and primary materials with operatic conventions. Similar to the wide range of work encompassed under the label of documentary theater, documentary operas can draw on a variety of source materials, such as court documents, oral histories, and firsthand written accounts. My work explores the intersection between different documentary media and the identities these materials represent. I argue that by building upon multilayered simultaneous media, opera’s inherent artificiality expands the representation of reality in documentary work. For creators of color, documentary materials give authority to their narratives, and by harnessing this credibility, they incorporate a sense of familiarity and belonging that aids in diversifying the demographics of a historically white-dominated institution. Moreover, given the musical nature of opera, I posit that documentary operas endeavor to capture a specific historical context through sound and to illustrate the affordances of music in foregrounding particular stories and perspectives. Combining theatre and performance studies approaches with theoretical frameworks from documentary studies, critical race studies, and opera studies, I demonstrate how American contemporary documentary opera presents a subversive means of cultural performance for historically marginalized artists.