Mission Statement
With the rise of postcolonial debates in the 1990s, musicological scholarship increasingly turned to opera as a privileged lens through which to examine Europe’s imperial processes from 1600 onward. Opera’s early globalization as a symbol of European “civilization” (Osterhammel 2014), combined with its remarkable capacity to adapt to local contexts worldwide (Walton 2013; Körner and Kühl 2022), positioned it as a powerful vehicle, anchor, and at times even a threat within the global dynamics of Western power. Yet the influence of postcolonial studies also introduced certain historiographical distortions, as their theoretical frameworks continue to be applied rather indiscriminately across different imperial formations. Whereas the histories of France and Britain have aligned productively with postcolonial paradigms of domination and resistance, the Spanish Empire (1492–1898) calls for a distinct interpretive framework. Madrid itself occupied an ambivalent position within Europe (Pagden 1990, 1994; Paquette 2008): its power was perceived as threatening and exotic, while its cultural production—except for the so-called “Siglo de Oro” (1500–1650)—was largely marginalized within the “Western canon.” At the same time, its overseas dominions often related to Madrid in ways that diverged from conventional colonial hierarchies, being treated more as extensions of the metropolis than as mere subject territories (Brading 1991; Weinstein 2005; Elliott 2006, 2009).
Opera became a central agent in shaping these imperial dynamics through a wide range of repertoires and practices: from operatic representations of the Spanish Empire—ranging from Vivaldi’s Motezuma (1733) and Verdi’s Don Carlo (1867) to Delius’s The Magic Fountain (1895) and Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexiko (1992)—to the translations and adaptations circulating across its dominions spanning the early modern consolidation of imperial borders to the contested legacies of empire in contemporary operatic works. The research agenda of this study group embraces this broad geographical and chronological scope (1600–1900) to investigate the role of opera—in its most capacious meaning—in the history of the Spanish Empire from its origins to its dissolution and beyond. Opera will be examined as a narrative and performative space for imperial dynamics; as a political and social instrument for both constructing and contesting Spanish hegemony; and as a porous arena of cultural coexistence across multiple forms and languages over several centuries, encompassing Spain, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the rest of Europe.
This study group builds upon a debate first initiated during the conference “Opera and the Spanish Empire: Genres, Encounters, and Translations (1600–1900),” which was organized at the School of Music, University College Dublin, in July 2025. On that occasion, scholars from Europe, North America, and South America engaged for the first time in a transnational debate on issues such as the definition of opera versus zarzuela within the Spanish imperial sphere; the challenges of representing the conquest of Mexico and Peru on stage; the influence of nineteenth-century positivism on the Spanish musical gaze toward the former colonies; and the operatic connections between the Spanish and Portuguese Americas, among others. The conference underscored the need for an ongoing critical debate aimed at reconceptualizing these diverse operatic phenomena as components of a broader political and cultural system whose legacies continue to shape the present.
The study group seeks to channel these insights into concrete academic initiatives—publications, workshops, and conferences—open to musicologists and historians from diverse disciplines and geographical areas. Spanish and English will be the official languages, while the group will remain open to all other languages and cultures whose histories and identities were shaped by the cultural dynamics of the Spanish Empire and continue to be marked by its legacy.
Chair
Francesco Milella González Luna (ES)