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Bluebeard and Restockings:
The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, in collaboration with the Department of Musicology and the Center for Gender Research at the University of Oslo, invite you to an interdisciplinary half-day seminar related to the triple bill Bluebeard's castle, staged by Tobias Kratzer and conducted by Edward Gardner. The performance opens with a staged version of Robert Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und – leben (1841), continues with Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and ends with A Florentine Tragedy (1915–16) by Alexander Zemlinsky.
Experts in musicology, theater- and performance studies and gender studies will discuss these three fascinating works and Kratzer’s interpretation of them as a story of toxic masculinities, women’s emancipation, inherited ambivalences, and complex desires embedded in relationships.
After an introduction to the pieces by Schumann, Bartók and Zemlinsky, we will take a closer look at feminist readings of the myth of the Bluebeard, which puts this specific production in a broader context, before zooming in on what will be presented at the stage of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet from January 20 and how this relates to previous reiterations as well as our contemporary context.
About the participants:
- Mary-Ann Smart, Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley.
- David Levin, Professor in the Departments of Germanic Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, and Theater and Performance Studies, University of Chicago.
- Erling Guldbrandsen, Professor of Musicology, University of Oslo.
- Jorunn Økland, Professor of Theology and Gender Studies, University of Oslo.
- Tone Brekke, Senior Lecturer in Literature and Gender Studies, University of Oslo.
- Sadie Menicanin, Postdoctoral Fellow in Musicology, University of Oslo.
- Auksė Beatričė Katarskytė, PhD student in Gender Studies, University of Oslo.
- Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby, Dramaturge, The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet