Renowned Scholar Specialist in Musicology Joins Academic Staff
**Acclaimed Musicologist Joy H. Calico to Explore Opera Scene Types in New Book**
Joy H. Calico, a renowned musicologist and former University Distinguished Professor of Musicology and German Studies at Vanderbilt University, is set to publish a groundbreaking book that aims to redefine the way scholars and audiences understand modern and contemporary opera.
Calico's upcoming book project focuses on developing a theory of twentieth- and twenty-first-century opera based on scene types, building conceptually on the work of composer Kaija Saariaho. This project, under contract with the University of California Press, seeks to theorize opera from around 1905 to the present by categorizing and analyzing opera scenes by type.
This innovative approach could have a significant impact on how scholars and audiences read and understand modern and contemporary opera. By moving beyond traditional, often rigid dramatic or musical frameworks and instead grouping scenes by type, Calico's work promises new insights into how opera's dramatic and musical elements function and evolve through the key decades of operatic composition from the early modern period to today. Such a typology of opera scenes could reshape interpretations of narrative, characterization, and musical dramaturgy in operas of the last century-plus, offering a fresh lens to examine innovation and continuity in the genre.
Calico's scholarly work has long focused on twentieth-century European music, a field in which she has made significant contributions. Her award-winning second book, "A Survivor from Warsaw: Reception and Response," treats Arnold Schoenberg's controversial cantata memorializing the Holocaust, offering a comprehensive analysis of reactions to Schoenberg's work in West Germany, Norway, Austria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Mark Kligman, the director of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, praised Calico's second book as an innovative cultural history.
Calico's research has been supported by prestigious institutions such as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy in Berlin. Her commitment to the professional development of junior faculty and underrepresented scholars is evident in her involvement with the Black Opera Research Network and her support for the FirstGen Program as an incoming series editor for the University of California Press.
Calico's latest venture, joining The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, promises to further enrich the field of musicology. With her upcoming book project, Calico continues to push the boundaries of opera studies, illuminating the structure of modern opera through a novel categorization of scene types, thereby enriching the field's understanding of works from 1905 onward.
In her groundbreaking book, Joy H. Calico, a distinguished scholar, focuses on personal growth and learning by developing a theory of twentieth- and twenty-first-century opera based on scene types. This education-and-self-development project promises new insights into the genre's narrative, characterization, and musical dramaturgy, contributing to the ongoing evolution of opera scholarship.
