Working Group with Dr. Nina Penner

Dr. Penner discussed her new project “Exploring IBPOC Experiences in Opera in Canada,” a mixed methods project conceived in partnership with Amplified Opera in Toronto that seeks to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion in the opera industry. As this was her first foray into empirical methods, she discussed the motivations, challenges, and things she learned along the way.

Dr. Nina Penner, Brock University, is a musicologist specializing in opera, musical theatre, and film music. She is the author of Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater (2020), the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Unique about her approach is her engagement with current work in analytic philosophy, which reveals not only the resources this philosophical tradition can bring to musicology but those which musicology can bring to philosophy. She also considers practical problems singers and directors confront on a daily basis, such as what to do about Wagner’s Jewish caricatures and the racism of Orientalist operas.

Presented over Zoom.