In Brief: February 15

Lectures discuss Degas’s dancers and operatic entrepreneurship

The influence of music and ballet in Edgar Degas’s artwork, and operatic entrepreneurship are the topics for the Feb. 24 College of Musical Arts’ Faculty Scholar Series.

The lectures, which are free and open to the public, begin at 8 p.m. in Bryan Recital Hall of the Moore Musical Arts Center. Presenters are Dr. Efychia Papanikolaou, musicology, and Dr. Ryan Ebright, a visiting instructor of musicology.

In her talk “What Did the Ballerina Hear? The Unheard Music of Degas’s Paintings” Papanikolaou will address how Degas’s dance canvases hold the “unheard” sounds that transcend the nuanced gestures and uncompromising poses of his ballerinas. The lecture will suggest the “silenced” aural dimension of Degas’s dance works and explore how aspects of movement, music, opera and audience reception in 19th Century Paris converge to reveal the auditory dimension of Degas’s dance space.

Ebright’s talk, “Operatic Entrepreneurship and Iconoclasm in Steve Reich’s ‘The Cave,'” will discuss “The Cave,” the politically charged documentary music video theater work unveiled in 1993 by the composer and video artist Beryl Korot. The work represented what they thought opera should be in a mediatized era. Their iconoclasm had come at a price – they had to self-produce “The Cave.” Ebright will trace their strategies of operatic entrepreneurship, which allowed them a degree of autonomy, and served as a model for future unorthodox multimedia works.